Cultural Awareness and the Native Food Experience

The Central Local Government Association (trading as the Legatus Group) is a regional local government organisation with 15 member councils in regional South Australia. This includes as members of a regional alliance with Regional Development Australia Organisations and the Northern and Yorke Landscape Board including their Aboriginal Engagement Committee with representatives from five of the region’s six Nations: Nukunu, Narungga, Ngadjuri, Kaurna and Peramangk. The Legatus Group region includes parts of the Adnyamathanha Nation.

The Flinders Ranges Council is a member of the Legatus Group and this workshop is designed to assist with Cultural Awareness through a Native Foods Program. This free workshop will feature a cross section of people from across Australia to help explore and enhance peoples knowledge and includes:

Christian Hampson: Exploring the native food experience and its contribution to resilient landscape design. Yerrabingin are combining Traditional Ecological Knowledge with modern design practice to realise projects that contribute, to water quality, biodiversity, food security through forage able landscapes.

Lou Chalmer: Stories with a Distinctive Taste What honey can tell us about Terroir in the Australian Landscape

Barney Hannagan: Native foods the American Indian and Indigenous Australia collaboration

Li Meng: UniSA Native Foods Supply Chain

Louise Lynch: Developing an indigenous food enterprise the use of native flavours and knowledge

The workshop is an adjunct to the Flinders Ranges Quandong Festival being held in Quorn 6 August 2022. 

Bios

Lou Chalmer

Lou Chalmer is a winemaker and agroecologist based in Western Australia. Her vision is a future in which people live in harmony with one another and nature, through collaboration, cooperation and appreciation of the natural environment. Yume Wines, Lou’s company, makes wines and ambrosias that tell a story of time and place in WA’s south-west.

Lou also consults to a range of clients in different industries, including the honey industry, the hospitality industry and the arts sector, and is partway through a PhD investigating sustainable transformation pathways in the agriculture sector. Outside of work, she loves to read widely, cook on her hibachi in picturesque settings, paint, and make new friends.

Barney Hannagan

Barney Hannagan grew up in a small outback town called Hawker, located in the heart of the Flinders Ranges in Southern Australia. Barney learned, from a young age, countless lessons in traditional indigenous campfire cooking, bush tucker collecting, and native foraging. The knowledge and skillset that he obtained throughout these formative years gave Barney a wildly unique loyalty to seasonality and sustainability, as well as an unyielding appreciation for diversity of ingredients and flavours.

His professional career began in 2004, and he has since helped successfully open cafes in Australia, The United Kingdom, and The United States of America.

With over 18 years of professional hospitality industry experience, Barney’s passion lies within the Australian-style cafe business model and open fire cooking. His menus showcase diverse cultural flavours, vibrant presentation techniques, responsible food sourcing and preparation methods — above all he is passionate about sharing this food experience with others.

Barney spent his first three years in the United States making a splash in the food scene with Proud Mary Coffee (a leading Australian cafe brand and cafe model) in Portland, Oregon, gaining mentions on Food Network, regular features in Eater/Eater PDX lists, and being listed in Bon Appetit Magazine’s top 50 Best New Restaurants in America (2018).

Barney made the move to Austin, Texas, in January 2020 with his wife Jazmine and Tanner the Dog and soon to follow the birth of their daughter Emmylou.

Barney wasted no time immersing himself in the Austin food community with invitations to participate in Austin’s hottest food festivals- SXSW, Hot Luck Food and Music and Agave Festival in Marfa, West Texas, to name a few.

In Austin Barney was involved in launching NYC based, Aussie Café brand, Two Hands on South Congress as Executive chef in October of 2020.

With the successful management and execution of the food program at Two Hands in Austin, Barney has since moved into the Group Executive Chef roll, which over sees all Two Hands locations. He is the Culinary Director on the operations team which is spearheading the successful presence of Two Hands in the US.

Christian Hampson

Co-founder and Director of Yerrabingin – Indigenous Design Thinking for Collaborative solutions. A Woiwurrung and Maneroo Aboriginal man interweaving Indigenous tacit knowledge and collaborative design thinking to walk a new path, away from conventional approaches, and create new opportunities for intergenerational capital to allow future Indigenous generations to thrive.

Yerrabingin provides sustainable solutions coupled with cultural connectivity and shared understanding to solve problems within the space of our communities’ social capital potential, through the lens of design thinking.

Yerrabingin has launched the world’s first Indigenous rooftop farm, located high above Sydney on the roof of Yerrabingin House in South Eveleigh with over 2,000 Australian native food plants. Yerrabingin is collaborating with a number of Chefs and restaurants, encouraging a renewed uptake and understanding of delicious and nutritious Australian native foods delivered sustainably. The site also offers workshops on Aboriginal culture, native permaculture, environmental sustainability and physical and mental health and well-being. Yerrabingin is also the 2019 Delicious Outstanding Native Producer Award Winner.

Louise Lynch

Louise Lynch grew up in Leigh Creek, far northern Flinders Ranges. Louise completed all her schooling in Leigh Creek and became a Nurse working at the Leigh Creek Hospital from 2010. Louise grew up learning the ways of Adnamatna culture through her schooling and from her many Aunties and Uncles in the area and has always had a love for campfire cooking and foraging for bush tucker. When Louise and Doogal met in 2013 sparks flew and their interest soon were all to familiar to them both. Louise moved to Edinburgh, Scotland with Doogal in 2016 where she worked as a Whisky Ambassador for the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and enjoyed her time traveling and learning about the food culture of Europe with fiancé Doogal. Louise then opened Flinders Food Co, with Doogal, in 2018 and has never looked back. Louise has a strong influence in creating menus and loves getting creative with native foods. Louise is the face behind all the front and back of house operations at Flinders Food Co and works in perfect harmony with Doogal to showcase how special Australian cuisine truly is.

Simon Millcock

Simon is the CEO of the Legatus Group a Regional Organisation of 15 Local Governments in South Australia and he has 21 years’ experience in the field of Regional Development whist being an active member of Economic Development Australia (EDA) including as a National Director from 2008 -2014. Simon has presented at local, regional, national and international conferences and was EDA’s representative to several International Economic Development Conferences in the USA and New Zealand. Simon has been the Chairman of the EDA South Australia Committee and the Tour Coordinator and Associate with an international chef exchange program for several years “Chef Outta Water”.

In recent years, he has also undertaken trade delegations to and from Asia, USA and Mexico. Simon has led many international economic development study tours and has worked in South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and the Australian Indian Ocean Territories of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands and on Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean.

Li Meng

Dr Li Meng is a lecturer in Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Engineering Economic Analysis, and Enterprise Resource management. Li is an experienced supply chain modeler, she has worked on discrete choice modelling for analysing public transport and housing preferences, an industry dynamic model for biomass energy development, research operations for fire resource management, and an activity-based model for analysing farm forestry land planning. Recently, she has been closely working on food supply chain with Aboriginal Elders, government agencies and industries for a project to promote the use of bush tucker food as a part of reconciliation action plan.