Australian Cuisine

Australian cuisine rests on the oldest continuous food culture on Earth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples developed sophisticated food systems over 65,000 years, utilizing native ingredients including kangaroo, emu, barramundi, wattleseed, lemon myrtle, bush tomatoes, and Kakadu plum. European colonization beginning in 1788 imposed British food traditions that dominated for nearly two centuries while indigenous food knowledge was marginalized.

Post-World War II immigration transformed Australian eating dramatically. Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, and Thai communities built food cultures that remade Australian cities into some of the world's most culinarily diverse places.

The late twentieth century saw Modern Australian cuisine emerge, freely combining Asian, European, and Middle Eastern techniques with native Australian ingredients. The recent native food movement has begun restoring Aboriginal bush foods to mainstream cooking. Lemon myrtle, wattleseed, macadamia nuts, Vegemite, and native pepperberry.