Bush Tucker Man Complete Series

ABC

Roadshow

R4 DVD

Only thirty or forty years ago a documentary series like this could not have been made. “Proper” documentaries featured African animals and were usually made by David Attenborough. Australian docos, such as they were, featured bronzed surfers at remote locations like Bondi. They had the compulsory stock library footage of a kangaroo and a koala to show they were made in Oz. It is as if we were embarrassed by that great empty hole on the maps in the middle of the country. A doco on native foods would have been unthinkable. So would a presenter who spoke Australian rather than plummy Melbourne English.

Gradually Australians came to take an interest in their own history and country. This was spurred on by the country’s Bicentennial in 1988. Docos still concentrated on the convict days and a European view of our history but the range was widening. The Australian Broadcasting Commission started producing docos on Australia and, surprise, the viewers liked them. Even so, in the 1990s when these series were made, a concept like “bush tucker”, native food plants, was original and somewhat risky.

The Australian Army had a project planned to map northern Australia and detail what food could be harvested in what season. This information would be printed on the back of Army Survey maps used by both the armed services and the new crop of 4WD tourists. They needed someone to do the work, someone who knew the area and could work with the aboriginal people who had so much of the information they needed. They found such a man in Les Hiddens, a serving officer. The ABC was invited to join in and filmed the mission.

Hiddens was a perfect choice. He is an Australian’s real Australian, not a comic Crocodile Dundee figure. He is knowledgeable, laconic, and competent. His accent is definitely Australian and he is a man Australians could relate to. He even has a sense of humour that sometimes comes out in jokes like the mosquito that was so big that it landed at Darwin airport and ground staff pumped a hundred gallons of fuel into it before they realised it wasn’t an aircraft. He is now a nationally recognised figure, as much for his unique style in felt hats as for any other reason. He also has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Australian explorers and the errors they made by underestimating the country. With typical European arrogance they set out burdened down with all sorts of unnecessary equipment and most of them died of starvation or thirst, or simply disappeared.

His deep respect for the aboriginals and their survival abilities shows through. They had survived for thousands of years in what, to Europeans, was a treacherous and hostile land. Their knowledge is disappearing as they concentrate in towns and settlements so Hiddens is preserving a critical part of their culture as well as making a doco.

The cinematography is superb. Quite apart from watching Hiddens eat disgusting stuff we get to see many examples of some of the most beautiful country in the world. This is the real Australia, not the Leyland Brothers visiting the tourist traps.

We also get “Eight Classic Stories of Survival” in which Hiddens looks at early explorers and their survival or otherwise. Perhaps this segment should be called “Eight Classic Examples of How To Die In The Bush”. These range from the complete disaster of the Burke and Wills expedition to convict Alexander Pearce who survived his escape from Macquarie Harbour in south western Tasmania and made his way through trackless bush to Hobart Town. He survived, not on bush tucker, but by eating his companions.

The early explorers were dreadfully inexperienced, had no idea of conditions in the bush and could not find the bush tucker that was all around them. Even during World War II, for all the technical advances available, pilots crashed and died of starvation. People still die every few years, usually when they abandon their broken down vehicle. The episodes highlight Hiddens’ point that travellers must be properly prepared. In his case “prepared” includes carrying a huge revolver not for effect but because a lot of the country he covers is infested with crocodiles.

The set is five DVDs in a nice presentation slipcase and for lovers of Australiana it is a reminder of a superb TV series. Hiddens has become an Australian icon, rightfully so.

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