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| The fertile alluvial flats of Victoria's basalt plain have been cleared of all native vegetation to become highly productive food factories. |
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| Digital composite by Csab Szamosy, 1996, for Imagine The Future Inc, created from photographs by Melbourne Market Authority and Merrill Findlay, with historic images contributed by Melbourne's Living Museum of the West. |
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| Rows of young onions planted out in the Werribee River irrigation area. |
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| Photo by Merrill Findlay for Imagine The Future Inc, 1996. |
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The social and environmental history of Victoria's basalt plain could be told through the fruit and vegetables people have grown on it over the last forty thousand years or more.
The first peoples cultivated many species in ways that were very different from the horticultural practices introduced by people of European and Asian descent. Aboriginal people worked with nature to produce conditions that were favourable to their favourite fruit and vegetables, including their staple food, murnong, or yam daisy. It was the women who traditionally harvested and collected fruit and vegetables, and their labour contributed more than 80 per cent of the food consumed by their clans.
Fruit and vegetable species now grown commercially on the basalt plain are generally native to Europe, the Americas, Asia or Africa instead of Australia, and have, in most cases, been specially bred to grow in Australian conditions. Each new group of settlers has introduced its own horticultural crops to the plain: lettuces, carrots and cabbages from Britain; okra and eggplant from the Mediterranean; wong bok (Chinese cabbage), and dong gua (winter melon) from China; ubi kemali (potato yam) from Malaysia; thakai (lemon grass) from Thailand; and bok choi and rau que (Asian basil) from Vietnam.
In commercial horticulture the soil is typically cleared of all other vegetation, levelled, mechanically cultivated and treated with biotoxic substances even before the crops are planted. Many of the herbicides, pesticides and fungicides used are persistent, and have been known to contaminate rivers and streams, and to damage the health of local people, as well as those who eat the produce. Nevertheless horticulture is very important to several regional centres on the basalt plain, including Werribee, and Bacchus Marsh. While most of the fruit and vegetables are sold through the Melbourne Market Authority for domestic consumption, an increasing percentage is exported directly from the farm gate.
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| Preparing the soil in accordance with contemporary horticultural practice to produce next season's vegetables. |
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| Photo by Merrill Findlay for Imagine The Future Inc, 1996. |
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Those concerned about the environmental impacts of current modes of food production are exploring more benign processes and technologies, including permaculture. Other growers are experimenting with indigenous fruits and vegetables, or 'bush tucker', using traditional Aboriginal farming methods. Species being produced in small quantities include the following.
Cumbungi, Typha doningensis, a very versatile rhizome plant with edible shoots, and a sweet underground stem which can be ground into a paste.
Kangaroo apple (Solanum lacinatum), a shrub from the same family as potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants,which produces fruit that are a deep orange colour when fully ripe.
Common reed (Phragmies australis) which still grows along the Yarra right in the heart of Melbourne. The fresh shoots can be used like bamboo shoots in stir fries.
Chocolate Lily (Arthropodium strictum), which smells like chocolate and produces starchy tubers like potatoes.
Vanilla lily (Anthropodium milleflorum), which smells like vanilla and produces multiple long finger-like roots that have crisp white flesh like a radish and taste like potatoes.
Native flax (Linum marginale) which has edible seeds that are very rich in oil, and can be added to bread and cakes. Kulin people ground these seeds into a paste and added to flour made from other seeds from which they baked flat breads. They also wove the leaves into carrying bags.
Many other local people are growing some, if not all, of their vegetables in their own back yards, or in community gardens on public land.
What are your stories about growing fruit and vegetables on Victoria's basalt plain?
Copyright Imagine The Future Inc 2002.
Text by Merrill Findlay.
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