Rations for the back country: Sensory landscapes

Discovering a relationship to country in inland and northern Australia through eating and taste, rather than sight and sound, is the subject of this essay. European settlers, with a highly organised literate culture, had to develop a sensory orientation in surviving the vast spaces of the country, and came to emphasise a distinctive pattern of eating. By contrast Indigenous peoples moving through the same country perceived another diversity of foods, often plants and animals invisible to the Europeans.