About Australia



Australia’s documented and researched history continue to produce astonishing details on the Australian culture. From way back in 50 000 BC when the first aborigines are thought to have immigrated to Australia, until the modern-age economical bloom, Australia has always been a place of exotic habits, exotic wildlife and exotic people.

Expressed through customs, habits, folklore, language, traditions or food, the Australian culture is one of the most complex in the world. For example aborigine culture is still kept today with some of the indigenous peoples of Australia, who have specific nomenclature and different habits from colonized Australia. Actually, the whole Australian culture consists of two combined cultures: the one kept alive for thousands of years by the indigenous peoples and the modern culture derived from Europe and recently America.

The modern cultural traditions include a strong inclination for arts, like painting, dancing, singing or writing (Thomas Keneally, Les Murray, Tim Winton or Nobel Prize Winner Patrick White to give just a few of the most important Australian writers). Sports are also very important to Australian culture, Rugby and Australian Rules football being the national sports. Australian sports also have a time-tested tradition in swimming and surfing.

Aborigine culture includes the belief in the Dreamtime, an ancient time of creation and the present day reality of dreaming. It also includes the strange habit of starting “bushfires”, ravaging fires that spread viral-like through the bushes and forest of Australia. These fires are used by the aborigines to encourage growth of edible plants and to purposely reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, thus giving them somewhat of a control over nature. They also use these “bushfires” to travel easier and fodder for prey, to eliminate pests and as a ceremonial process that involves “cleaning out the land through fire”.


 * Australian Food & Diets

The Australian aborigine dietary tradition is of course based on animal flesh and fat, as the aborigines are long-established hunter-gatherers. The hunter-gatherer tribes in modern Australia have kept a strict diet that is based on the animal’s fat and they have learned when it’s best to hunt for the animals, in order to catch them in a period where they have the most fat. One of the most amazing sources of nourishment for the aborigines in Eastern Australia were the mountain Bunya pines. Every year, these pines make huge cones, which have sweet, 2-inch seeds in them, making that one of the aborigines’ main source of food for a long time. Every three years, they organized the Bunya Bunya Festival, where all tribes were allowed to come and eat the healthy seeds.

Modern cuisine is mainly based on the English Cookbook, sustaining several influences in the past few decades, from foreign cuisines that came from Italy, China, Indonesia or Greece. Despite these influences, Australian diet has managed to retain some unique dishes, some of the best known being the Vegemite (a dark-brown yeast extract usually spread on bread or toast), Anzac Biscuits (biscuits of tough constitution that were “invented” during the World War Two rationings made by the Australian ANZAC soldiers) or Lamingtons (cakes made out of flavored gelatin or strawberry jam and coconut).

The main meat dish of the average Australian includes Kangaroo or Emu meat, while the most sought after fish meat is that of the Swordfish, Barramundi or Yabby. These meats have long been established as traditional in aboriginal diets, and in rural Australia.

With such a rich tradition and culture, Australia has gained an internationally renowned fame. The exotic Australian diets are spreading in restaurants all over the world just like the aborigines’ wildfires. Regardless of what scientists might say, that these diets were formed in New Zealand first, it’s still a certain fact that Australia promoted them and made them internationally famous, not to mention taking them as their national food cuisine.
 * Conclusion