Monday 9 December 2013

Tumbarumba – a town of dandies

This is the second time we've been forced to stop in one place waiting for a bike part to arrive, but as our wise friend John (who we met in Colac Colac) says, "It's not the problem that's important, but how you handle it." Time is expanding out for us in this slow journeying through beautiful hill country and we are appreciating what happens when life is slow and ecologically calibrated.


We saw this incredible Walgalu coolaman at the Tumbarumba museum. A coolaman is typically used for baby cradling and bathing and food storage, gathering and preparation. One tool, many uses – brilliant, appropriate and non-polluting technology! It has made us think about each of the tools we've brought along on our ride.


This is our root vegetable tool. It slices down through the soil and uproots deeply buried sources of free and highly nutritious carbohydrate. But we also use it for digging toilet pits, digging for worms to fish with, and Woody uses it as a toy. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) roots are everywhere in temperate Australia and now is a good time to harvest the young tap roots and the tender leaves, especially in the ranges where it is still cool and the roots haven't become too woody.


While in Tumba we had the chance to rest and laze, throw a line in the creek and do a little gentle foraging.


We caught a 25cm rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and made a delicious meal using local and bicycled ingredients:


Tumbarumba Creek trout, Tumbarumba parkland dandelion root and leaves, our home-grown garlic (bicycled), Tallangatta backyard lemons (bicycled. Thanks George and Laura!), Biodynamic Powlett Hill pasta (bicycled from our local region) and Benalla olive oil (bicycled from Benalla).


We cooked the garlic inside the fish and BBQ'd the dandelion root in the fish juices, adding some olive oil. We cooked the pasta, strained and emptied it onto a bed of washed dandelion leaves. We added more olive oil and squeezed lemon and let the pasta gently steam the leaves. We then added the fish and roots and, well, we can highly recommend this dish...


After a few nights free-camping in the Tumbarumba township we thought it time to do some washing and headed along to the caravan park and pitched our tents beside the Tumbarumba Creek.


With time to drift we closed up the tents, covered the bikes and hopped on a local bus for a wee adventure to Batlow where we knocked on a door to a house with a yard full of chooks and asked whether we could purchase some eggs.


The delightful Eileen welcomed us to her little appley town and we paid $2 (after insisting on paying something) for six just-laid eggs from happy gals such as this proud mama.


In both Tumbarumba and Batlow the towns are filling with a multiplicity of ethnicities to work in the orchards. These particular itinerate workers are using their Sunday to write to loved ones, hotspotting from the town's library and pulling free spark from the public toilets next door.


Sudanese, French, American, Japanese, Nepalese, Thai and Taiwanese are arriving in the towns to pick blueberries or thin the apples.


Our little caravan park is a hotspot of culture mashing. Amber, a graduate of literature from Taiwan, took a particular liking to Zero and hung out by the creek with Meg and Woody


while Patrick jumped into the outdoor communal kitchen to see what he could rustle up with another large bunch of freshly foraged dandelion. Notice the modern day coolamon.


We thought it time for a medicinal booster using three of the most punchy beneficial foods – cayenne, garlic and dandelion – none of which are store bought but either grown or foraged by us.


Patrick caramelised this awesome threesome in the Benalla olive oil, added the chopped dandelion leaves, cooking them through before adding water and boiling. He then changed the water to lessen the bitterness, simmered towards a soup,


strained off the water, laid the highly medicinal veg on a bed of Tumbarumba sourdough and finished the dish with Eileen's gorgeous eggs. A simple and delicious preventative to illness and the need for commercial pharmaceuticals.


Our bike part has now arrived (thanks Sam!), we're feeling nourished, rested and nurtured by a host of local peeps (thanks Peta, Laura, Geoff, Kate, Heather, Adam, Wayne, Peter, Debbie, Graeme and Julie), and we're ready to face the hills again and the next stage of our journey. Thanks for travelling along with us.

6 comments:

  1. Yum. I'm on the forage for some dandelion root. That looks suspiciously like a brown trout (Salmo trutta) with those orangey spots. Rainbow trout usually have a more defined red colour and black spots on the sides.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. you'll be well served if you pull up dandelion roots, but they can be mistaken for a number of false dandelions, including hawksbeard and flatweed. the easiest way of telling them apart is that dandies have single flowers on single stems while the others have multiple flowers branching off their stems. the trout seemed way to light to be a brown, but you're probably right, the round splotches are larger on a brown. thanks for the observation brucini! love to you in qt.

      Delete
  2. Really enjoying seeing your freshly picked and locally found meals, just a few simple ingredients and you have a wholesome meal to enjoy.
    x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks zara, it's certainly a thrill to know the origins of our ingredients, although equally depressing when we have to resort to purchasing food which is lifeless and ecologically damaging in its production.

      Delete
  3. There are SO many life lessons when we are willing to up sticks and go with the flow. I love the slow meandering and side journeys that your trip is sharing. I love the sense of community that you find whenever you make camp and talk to the locals and I love the feeling of connectedness that melds with your story in every post. Cheers for sharing your amazing journey with us all :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks trts, we were concerned about being community-less on this trip but that, as you've observed, is not the case at all. yes, the slow nature of the trip allows for relationships to form. and yes, travel is transitory, but we're finding this doesn't counter the possibility of making connections.

      Delete