A garden we came back to
In late winter 2025, we walked into the Botanic Gardens of Sydney ready to learn about bush foods. Andrew, our First Nations guide, gave us leaves to crush and smell and introduced us to plants we might otherwise have walked straight past. I left with a question about the tiny wasps that live inside some figs. When we came back with our cameras a year later, those moments changed what we noticed among the trees.
We were walking on Gadigal Country, although not every plant in the Garden grows naturally here. Some came from Queensland rainforests or other parts of Australia. Andrew helped us see the plants in front of us; as we followed up his stories, we learned to ask where each plant belongs and whose knowledge we were hearing. That made the return visit feel like the continuation of the tour.
A plaque in the Botanic Gardens of Sydney honours the First Peoples’ care for Country. Photo: © The Geo Kid.
See the Garden as we did on our return visit:
Native raspberries to taste
We got to try native raspberries. It was smaller and less sweet than the supermarket fruit we knew, but we liked them. We were curious as to how a raspberry growing here could be so different from the ones in our fridge.
That question sent us looking beyond the berry. The Australian National Botanic Gardens records native raspberry fruit as food eaten by Aboriginal people. We did not photograph a plant label, so we cannot name the species Geo tasted. We can remember its flavour and still be honest about the name we do not know.
Our other tastes had stories of their own: the sharpness of Davidson plum and roasted wattleseed, which Andrew compared with coffee and chocolate. Then came the leaves. We were given lemon myrtle, saltbush and lilly pilly to crush and smell. We have lemon myrtle and lilly pillies at home, and I began to wonder how much attention we had ever paid to them.
The lemon myrtle in our own garden
The lemon scent arrived as soon as we crushed the leaves. We grow the same kind of tree at home, yet I had never traced it back to its own Country. Lemon myrtle, Backhousia citriodora, grows naturally in Queensland’s coastal forests, roughly between Brisbane and Mackay. It does well in some Sydney gardens, but it is not native to Gadigal Country. That familiar scent turned out to have a geography lesson inside it.
IndigiGrow, an Aboriginal-run nursery in Sydney, records lemon myrtle leaves wrapped in paperbark to flavour fish and aromatic leaves burned on a campfire to discourage insects. Andrew suggested tea or a herb for seafood, then mentioned a lemon myrtle cheesecake. We have not made it yet, but I can imagine returning to our own tree and thinking about its leaves differently: as an ingredient, and as a plant with a history much older than our garden.
A leaf strong enough to weave
One of our favourite photographs catches Andrew leaning back, putting his weight against a lomandra leaf. It did not give way. We grow lomandra at home, and anyone who has tried to tidy one knows those leaves are strong. IndigiGrow describes the leaves of Lomandra longifolia, the spiny-headed mat-rush, being woven into baskets, nets and eel traps, while its seeds could be pounded into flour.
Andrew’s determined pull and the spiky seed heads in our pictures, one plant gave us two ways to remember it. My mother had insisted on native plants in our garden to welcome birds. Now I have another reason to keep learning from Aboriginal educators about the plants growing around us.
Finger lime citrus fruit that had not yet bloomed
The finger lime bush offered a different kind of surprise, although there was no fruit for us to sample. Andrew pointed out its thorns and described the long, narrow fruit filled with little citrus pearls. Depending on the variety, the skin and pulp can take several colours, from green and yellow to pink or purple. Finger lime, Citrus australasica, grows naturally in rainforests of south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales. I have tasted finger limes at restaurants before, but neither Geo nor I were able to taste one on this tour as the fruiting season is between November and May.
We filmed Andrew explaining how the fruit grows and how those tangy pearls can brighten food. Kingfish sashimi was one idea; cheesecake was another. IndigiGrow also records finger lime fruit as a traditional food and describes medicinal uses of its pulp. Andrew mentioned skin care, which we have left as a detail of his explanation rather than a treatment suggestion. The video lets you hear his account of the plant where he showed it to us.
Watch Andrew explain the finger lime
A saltbush leaf and an idea for the kitchen
The saltbush leaf came with an idea to take home. Andrew let us crush and smell it, then suggested saltbush dukkah. We did not eat saltbush that day, but I could picture dried leaves adding a savoury note to a mix of toasted nuts and spices. Australian native food makers also use saltbush to season vegetables, fish and meat. It gave us a way to continue the lesson at the kitchen table with a properly sourced ingredient.
Saltbush is a shared name, not a species identification. Old man saltbush, Atriplex nummularia, is one example: a silvery-leaved shrub of dry inland Australia whose leaves are used in cooking. Aboriginal uses recorded for saltbush also include grinding seeds for flour. We do not know which saltbush Andrew handed us, so we have kept the tour plant unnamed to species. A useful recipe still begins with knowing what is in your hand.
Warrigal greens before the pesto
From there Andrew showed us a patch of warrigal greens, Tetragonia tetragonoides, spreading low with fleshy leaves. It grows on Australia’s coast, including coastal New South Wales, and in New Zealand. Europeans called it “New Zealand spinach” because its leaves can be cooked in a similar way. The name can mislead: it is neither supermarket spinach nor a plant confined to New Zealand. Looking at its shape in our photograph, we could see why identification matters before dinner.
Andrew suggested pesto, with one important step before the blender: blanch the identified leaves in boiling water and discard the water. Warrigal greens contain oxalates; eating large amounts raw can be a concern, particularly for people prone to certain kidney stones. His broader warning stayed with us as we moved on: a leaf or berry is never a tasting opportunity unless you know exactly what it is.
A tart taste from the rainforest
Then came a taste that needed no help to stand out. Davidson plum was strikingly tart. Back home, I searched our photographs for a purple fruit and found only tiny developing clusters against a trunk. Davidsonia trees can produce flowers and fruit on their main stems, so I had been looking in the wrong place. Our image does not identify which Davidsonia species Andrew showed us, but it captures the part of the tree I would have missed before the tour.
“Davidson plum” covers different rainforest species and different Countries. Davidsonia jerseyana grows naturally in a small part of northern New South Wales and is endangered in the wild. In far north Queensland, Davidsonia pruriens bears tart, crimson-fleshed fruit that the Botanic Gardens of Sydney identifies as an important food for Aboriginal cultural groups there. Seeing a tree in Sydney brought those places into our story; it did not make their histories Sydney stories.
Andrew connected the Queensland rainforest fruit with cassowaries, birds that eat fruit and help carry seeds through the forest. We saw neither a cassowary nor a ripe plum on our walk; we did get to taste how sharply the fruit announces itself. Today that tartness works well in jams, sauces and desserts. If we try cooking with it, we will buy farmed fruit and let the flavour remind us of the rainforest story Andrew told.
The blue berries we learned to look at, not taste
A few small blue berries prompted the clearest safety lesson of the day. Our notes call the plant “blue flaxberry”; flax lilies belong to the genus Dianella, which includes several species around Sydney. Dianella caerulea is one called blue flax lily, with strap-like leaves, blue flowers and glossy berries. We did not record a label for Andrew’s plant and we did not taste the berries. Their colour was a reason to look more closely, not to reach for one.
The leaves had a story of their own. The Australian National Botanic Gardens records split flax lily leaves twisted into strong cord in central Victoria and used for baskets in Tasmania. Those are documented uses from those places, not a Gadigal practice we can infer from our Sydney tour. What looked at first like a berry plant could also provide fibre strong enough to make something useful.
Accounts of whether Dianella berries can be eaten differ by source and species; the Queensland Poisons Information Centre treats blue flax lily berries as potentially toxic. Andrew’s warning gave us the right ending to this stop: if you do not know a plant, do not eat it. We left the berries where they were.
The fig question that stayed with me
At the sandpaper fig, the fruit seemed to be growing in the wrong place: little clusters against the trunk instead of among the leaves. Andrew opened one in his hands to look for a fig wasp. We photographed his hands as he opened the fig. Our video shows the sandpaper fig tree and its fruit, but not Andrew opening one; no wasp is clearly visible in the photograph. I kept wondering what might be happening inside that little fig.
Watch the sandpaper fig tree and fruit
One Australian sandpaper fig, Ficus coronata, has rough, hairy leaves and small figs that can grow against the trunk as well as near the leaves. It occurs across much of coastal and tableland New South Wales, often along creeks. Its ripe purple-black figs are edible, and a Queensland council records Aboriginal use of the rough leaves to smooth wooden tools.
What Andrew was looking for made more sense once I learned that a fig holds its tiny flowers on the inside. In many wild species, a female fig wasp carries pollen in through a small opening and lays eggs in some of those flowers. Young wasps develop there; the females fly out to find another receptive fig, while males often remain inside. The fig gains a pollinator and the wasp a nursery. Andrew had opened an entire life cycle in his hands, even though we did not see the wasp itself.
That left my supermarket question: does every fig we buy contain a wasp? No. The common eating fig, Ficus carica, is a different species, and many varieties sold for fruit grow without wasp pollination. Other cultivated varieties do need it. I went into the tour thinking a fig was a familiar fruit; I came out knowing that an Australian tree could have a far more intricate story inside.
A lilly pilly we recognised from home
After that surprise, the lilly pilly felt almost like an old acquaintance. We have several at home, but Andrew handing us a leaf to crush made me wonder which ones we actually grow. The Garden’s Gadigal Story Journey identifies lilly pilly berries among the foods important to Gadigal people and neighbouring communities. Andrew described the small fruit as apple-like. We smelled the leaf; we did not taste a berry on this tour.
Our photograph of a Garden label gives one answer for the tree there: small-leaved lilly pilly, Syzygium luehmannii, also known as riberry. Its natural rainforest range begins north of Sydney, around Kempsey. The New South Wales botanical database also records a different lilly pilly, Syzygium smithii, as Midjuburi in Cadigal; its fruit ranges from white to purple, while ripe riberries are pink to red. The label helped us identify one tree. We still need to learn the names of the ones outside our own door.
The wattle that told people when to fish
When we reached a wattle, Andrew showed us its dark seeds and described the coffee-and-chocolate note of roasted wattleseed. We tasted a prepared sample. We also have footage of a wattle flowering, though the film alone does not establish that this tree produced the seed we ate. The plants in the Acacia group differ, and identifying a flower is not the same as identifying a food ingredient.
One detail from that stop stayed just out of reach in my hurried notes: something about mullet season. The Botanic Gardens of Sydney explains that the flowering of Sydney golden wattle, Acacia longifolia, signalled to Gadigal people that it was time to fish for sea mullet. Suddenly the yellow flowers connected our path through the Garden to the harbour beside it. IndigiGrow also records seeds of many wattle species being ground for food. Australia’s national floral emblem is another species, Acacia pycnantha; Andrew’s local wattle story was about reading a season on Country.
Wattle flowering in the Botanic Gardens of Sydney. Photo: © The Geo Kid.
A nut from a rainforest tree
The next tree took us well beyond Sydney. We photographed a macadamia, but not a nut, and we have no label to identify the photographed species. Macadamia integrifolia grows naturally in rainforests and moist forests of northern New South Wales and Queensland. Its edible kernel sits inside a hard shell and a green husk. Macadamias were food for Aboriginal people in parts of Queensland long before they became a familiar shop purchase. Seeing a tree in Sydney sent us looking north to the rainforests where its relatives grow wild.
The Botanic Gardens says all four Macadamia species are native to Australian rainforest and threatened in the wild. Scientists are working out how to preserve their seeds because ordinary freezing can damage them. It was an unexpected thought while looking at a tree whose nuts we know so well: the cultivated food is common, while its wild relatives need careful protection.
A Bunya Pine tree that brought people together
The bunya pine rose above us, filling the frame when we pointed the camera upwards. Araucaria bidwillii grows naturally in two separated regions of Queensland. Its immense cones contain large edible seeds. Andrew told us about people travelling for the bunya harvest, and the Botanic Gardens describes gatherings where sharing the nuts helped Aboriginal groups maintain kinship and cultural connections. The food brought people together.
Andrew also spoke about songlines. We cannot do justice to that knowledge through a quick definition from a visitor’s walk. Researchers working with Indigenous collaborators have found evidence that bunya nuts were moved and shared over long distances in south-east Queensland, and they interpret those patterns alongside oral histories and Indigenous knowledge. Standing under a planted bunya in Sydney gave us a starting point for learning from the custodians of its natural Country.
Pigface, where the land meets the sea
Near the end of the tour, Andrew gave us one more plant to look for beyond the Garden: pigface, growing near beaches. A coastal species, Carpobrotus glaucescens, spreads low over sand with thick triangular leaves and large pink-purple flowers. Its stems can root as they creep, helping to hold dunes in place. We did not taste pigface, and without a label we cannot identify the species Andrew showed us. Even so, the next beach walk suddenly had something else for us to notice.
The Australian National Botanic Gardens records the red-purple fruit of C. glaucescens as food used by Aboriginal people and describes its roasted leaves as a salt substitute. Food is only part of the plant’s place in the dunes. We can look for it without picking it, just as Andrew taught us to do throughout the tour.
An ancient tree discovered - the Wollemi Pine
Our return visit also led us to a Wollemi pine, which we photographed and filmed. It was known from fossils before living trees were found in the Blue Mountains in 1994. The tree is not one of the bush foods Andrew introduced to us, but it reminded us why a botanic garden matters: along with teaching visitors, it helps keep rare plants alive and makes space for questions that bring us back.
Plan your visit
Botanic Gardens of Sydney offers an Aboriginal Bush Tucker Tour at its Sydney garden on Gadigal Country. A First Nations guide leads visitors through Cadi Jam Ora to learn about bush foods and their uses. Check the official tour page for dates, access and current details; your guide, route and seasonal plants may differ from ours. View tour details and booking.
Make a day of it
We came back for photographs and stayed to wander. There were birds in the trees, a harbour view to slow us down and corners we had not explored on the tour. Families can bring a picnic or make time for the Succulent Garden and HSBC Oriental Garden; cafés and Botanic House offer somewhere to eat. We would start with a First Nations guided experience, then leave room for the unhurried walk that lets a question about one plant lead to another.
A map helps turn that extra time into a relaxed walk. The accessible paths map below marks routes through the Garden and The Domain, along with entrances, toilets and places to stop. The blue lines show accessible paths, not the route of our guided bush tucker tour. Choose a gate and a few places you would like to see, then leave room to follow your own curiosity.
View the Garden’s accessible paths map and current accessibility information.
The flavours came home with us as possibilities. For a family experiment, we would buy food-grade lemon myrtle, wattleseed or finger lime from a grower or native food business rather than pick from a garden. IndigiGrow at La Perouse sells native plants and ingredients, and Aboriginal food businesses share ideas for cooking with them. Andrew’s lemon myrtle cheesecake suggestion is still on our list.
Discover the story behind this design
Our Gadigal Country Tasty Travels T-shirt is another way to carry the memory of this day. The illustration brings together Geo, native foods and the place where we learned about them.
Explore the Tasty Travels design in sizes:
What we brought home
The tour gave us a new appreciation and understanding of the native trees we already have in our own garden at home and others we would like to plant. When we returned recently to the gardens, we found we were still learning. That feels like the best thing we brought home from our Bush Tucker Tour. It also reminded us of the serenity and peace that a Spring morning spent at the Botanic Gardens brings. We will be back there soon - this time with a picnic basket, a rug and some good friends.