January end of the month - on the road NW

Happy happy happy - we’re on the road again in the outback on roads less travelled. 

We’re seeing lots of interesting things - as always! and it’s been marvellous to see that so many places have picked out ‘heritage trails’. The place in the pic for instance which is north of the Murray, west of Moama. You may think it looks very uninteresting, but it has a fascinating history and surprising abundance. The vegetation .... you simply have to look to appreciate. The region is still part of the travelling stock routes, the long  paddocks of old, that crisscross Australia, and over the millennia it has been part of the homelands of the Yorta Yorta, Wamba Wamba and Perrepa Perrepa peoples. The gully marked by the trees in the background of the pic was once part of the ancient Murray river course and a great source of food. 

Looks can be deceiving, but if only we lure how to look we would find the remains of  wetlands and middens, rookeries, fish traps and ochre pits. Today the traditional peoples of the region continue to use the river forests for food and medicines including the Box mistletoe (one of the 70 odd species endemic to Australia) and the many tubers - I want to know more! As an aside, in Europe mistletoe is being trialed as a cancer treatment and it has been used to treat for headaches. 

We know so little about the medicinal, nutritional and other benefits of the scraps of plants at our feet or indeed what plant species have survived millennia of Australia’s challenging climate. Interestingly we passed large areas of cultivated salt bush - it seems to be the new wonder herb, all part of a move towards cultivating indigenous plants for consumption. Well hooray, it’s about time is all I can say - scheez!  My much-thumbed SA outback plant book lists at least 25 species of salt bush out of Australia’s 300 or so indigenous species (1500 globally). I’m looking forward to exploring Australia’s hundreds of species of saltbush - later!

Because of the lack of local stones to be found here, once most tools used by the local aboriginal people were traded from neighbouring groups. These trade routes went in all directions linking in to major indigenous trade networks that covered the whole of Australia. I know, we reckon the cameliers, drovers, etc forged significant trade and communication routes. Well yes they did, but these relative newcomers weren’t the first trail blazers.  

I’ll keep exploring to discover more about our wide rainbow-coloured land!! Au bientot .....

A slightly denuded bull oak. I love the desert- dry oaks

Salt bush - one of many. Samphire is a member of that same chenopod family and is rather a trendy salad in some quarters.