Culinary experiences

New South Wales

Bundyi Cultural Tours

The Riverina region of New South Wales holds millennia-old Aboriginal secrets, many of which are revealed on a Bundyi Cultural tour with local Wiradjuri man Mark Saddler. Experiences can last from a couple of hours to a full day – whichever one you choose, you’ll gain eye-opening insights into the Aboriginal communities who hail from the Wagga Wagga region, around a five-hour drive south-west of Sydney. Discover “scar trees” and ancient shell middens, and then glimpse sacred sites including Galore Hill Scenic Reserve and The Rock Nature Reserve – Kengal Aboriginal Place. This spiritual Dreaming and ceremonial location is believed to be where the Creator of all things, Baiame, left his dingoes before ascending to the sky. Your adventure will also give you a taste for bush tucker, whether in its raw form (try saltbush) or infused in Mark’s wattleseed damper; pick a longer tour and he’ll also prepare a delicious barbecue lunch. 

Ngaran Ngaran Culture Awareness – Yuin Retreat

See some of the prettiest coastal scenery of New South Wales while gaining an insight into traditional culture, on a two-night Aboriginal experience with Ngaran Ngaran Culture Awareness. The two-day, two-night Yuin Retreat invites guests to come, walk and listen to a sacred dreaming of Djirringanj country, heartland of the Yuin people. Experience ceremony and Dreaming stories that have been passed down to connect to Country with tour highlights including a traditional smoking ceremony, sunrise beach ceremony and traditional reflections yarning circle. Enjoy resort-style accommodation and Aboriginal cuisine, including local seafood and kangaroo with a range of native spices. This tour is based in Narooma and the neighbouring village of Tilba – about four-and-a-half hours’ drive south of Sydney. Transfers are available from Moruya, Sydney and Canberra airports. 

The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney – Aboriginal Cultural Tour

The 90-minute Aboriginal Cultural Tour through Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden provides a unique opportunity to learn about the uses of native trees and plants by Australia’s First Nations People, whilst also learning about the diverse history and culture of the Cadigal people – the Traditional Custodians of the Sydney city area. Depending on what’s in season, you’ll also be able to forage and taste some Australian bush foods. Other programs include Aboriginal bush foods experiences where you will learn how to identify seasonal bush foods followed by a unique and modern dining experience utilising these ingredients.

Northern Territory

Karrke Aboriginal Cultural Experience & Tours

The breathtaking Kings Canyon, located in Australia’s Red Centre provides the ultimate backdrop for the one-hour Aboriginal Cultural Tour, by Karrke. Learn about dot painting, tools, weapons, bush tucker and medicinal plants used by the Central Australia desert people during this hands-on experience; be introduced to native foods such as bush tomato, discover the significance of dot painting, and see how mulga wood is shaped into tools such as spears, hunting clubs and boomerangs. There is also opportunity to ask as many questions as you can about Luritja and Pertame (Southern Arrernte) language and culture, and how people have thrived in this extreme but often bountiful landscape for tens of thousands of years.

Lirrwi Tourism

People often speak of undiscovered parts of the world. But Arnhem Land, a vast region in the north-west of the Northern Territory, is the real thing: 97,000 square kilometres (37,450 square miles) of barely touched wilderness, equal parts beautiful, daunting and mysterious. The Yolŋu people have been custodians of this land for millennia and, on a tour with Lirrwi Tourism, visitors are immersed in an authentic encounter with this ancient culture. Single and multi-day tours explore aspects of Yolŋu life, from song and dance to art and the yidaki (didgeridoo) – all against the backdrop of the wondrous parallel world that is East Arnhem Land. Here, the calendar is divided into six seasons, and songlines – or Dreaming tracks – run through the landscape.

Nitmiluk Tours

Three hours south-east of Darwin lies a network of 13 towering gorges, through which snakes the Katherine River. This is Nitmiluk National Park: home to the Jawoyn people and a riot of rugged beauty. Nitmiluk Tours, a 100 per cent Aboriginal-owned company, lets you enjoy the best of Jawoyn country and culture via its smorgasbord of cruises, hikes, cave tours, swims, canoeing trips and scenic helicopter flights – not to mention its accommodation offerings, which include everything from a camping ground and cabins, through to the luxurious Cicada Lodge. Be sure to walk to the first gorge lookout point for sunset or sunrise – or, if you find yourself closer to Katherine, join one of Nitmiluk Tours’ guided walks through the fascinating Cutta Cutta Caves. 

Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia – Ayers Rock Resort

In the sand dunes beside Uluṟu, rests Ayers Rock Resort, an accommodation and cultural experience collective comprising five different stays and more than 65 tours. The resort offers a restful base from which to explore the awe-inspiring Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park and its famous monoliths (both 860-metre high Uluru and the lofty domes of Kata Tjuta), as well as to connect you more fervently with the rich Aboriginal culture and landscape of the Red Centre. Take a camel ride into the sunset; meander through the lush greenery at Uluru’s base – viewing rock art illustrating the site’s creation stories as you walk; or dine under a canopy of stars at a Sounds of Silence dinner, an atmosphere-laden evening of food, culture and astronomy, held amid sand dunes and silent surrounds.

Queensland

Adventure North Australia – Daintree Dreaming Tour

Adventure North Australia offers close to a dozen experiences departing from Cairns and Port Douglas, from day trips to three-day journeys that take you to hard-to-access areas of Cape Tribulation. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to spear fish, catch a crab or fossick for bush tucker, here is your chance. After learning these techniques with guidance from Kubirri-Warra brothers Linc or Brandon Walker, you’ll cook up your haul and enjoy it with damper, a traditional bread. Go off-road in 4WDs to access some of the most important sights Tropical North Queensland has to offer, including excursions to far-flung corners of the state. The Walkers share their knowledge of the environment and traditional foods while following in the footsteps of their ancestors. Full-day and multi-day trips take you through the World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest, to sacred Aboriginal beaches and ancient rock formations.

Culture Connect

Far North Queensland is a spectacular amalgam of rainforest, reef, beach and outback, and Culture Connect, a tour company based in Cairns, offers visitors wonderful ways to connect with ancient Indigenous culture in the region. At Normanby Station, a vast cattle property outside Cooktown, Traditional Owners the Harrigan brothers introduce guests to their way of life as cattlemen and as guardians of extraordinary galleries of Aboriginal rock art. Back on the coast, another pair of brothers, Linc and Brandon Walker, invite visitors to join them on Cooya Beach, traditional Kuku Yalanji fishing grounds, to learn everything from how to throw a spear to search for plants used to create medicine.

Flames of the Forest – Aboriginal Cultural Experience

Flames of the Forest’s Aboriginal Cultural Experience involves heading into the World Heritage-listed Wet Tropics rainforest, near Cairns, for a seven-dish banquet dinner served under a silk canopy illuminated by hand-made crystal chandeliers. Cultural experiences are interwoven with the dinner, as your Kuku Yalanji hosts share music, ceremony and storytelling, as well as inviting guests to spend some time sitting quietly, listening to the sounds of the rainforest at night. The food is modern Australian, locally sourced where possible, and features plenty of bush tucker ingredients: the night’s signature dish is a lemon myrtle-infused kangaroo loin, served on a bed of wild rocket and toasted macadamia nuts garnished with homemade fig chutney.

Rainforestation Nature Park – Pamagirri Aboriginal Experience

If you’re keen on learning to throw a boomerang or want to see a didgeridoo or spear throwing presentation, Cairns’ Pamagirri Aboriginal Experience at Rainforestation Nature Park is the place to come. Set amid 40 hectares of World Heritage-listed rainforest, a 30-minute drive north of Cairns city, this eco-friendly, family-owned nature park has called the jungle home since 1974. The Pamagirri Aboriginal Experience provides an in-depth look into authentic Indigenous culture. The experience’s authenticity earned it gold in the Queensland Tourism Awards for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Culture. During the activity, you’ll enjoy a tradition Indigenous dance in a rainforest amphitheatre, where the tropical trees, vines and flora act as the theatre’s living walls.

Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia – Mossman Gorge Centre

Aboriginal-owned Mossman Gorge Centre is located 20 minutes’ drive north of Port Douglas in the World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest, where the Kuku Yalanji people have lived for centuries. It is also the starting point for their multi-award-winning signature experience, the Ngadiku Indigenous Guided Dreamtime Walks. Ngadiku means ‘stories and legends from long ago’ in local Kuku Yalanji language, and that’s exactly what you can expect on this memorable rainforest exploration. Learn about bush foods and bush medicine, pick up skills such as how to make ‘bush soap’, and experience a traditional smoking ceremony. The guided experience ends with bush tea and damper.

Walkabout Cultural Adventures

Discover where two World Heritage sites meet – the Wet Tropics Rainforest (home of World Heritage-listed Daintree) and the Great Barrier Reef – and learn about the environment and wildlife from an Aboriginal perspective on tour with owner of Walkabout Cultural Adventures, Juan Walker. Walker’s parents and grandparents (and many generations before them) were born in the region – he will point out where – making this a deeply personal, intimate experience. Cruise mangroves scanning for mud crabs in tidal flats, forage for pipis in the shallows, and learn how to throw a spear to catch your next meal. Juan is the ideal guide for tours highlighting the Daintree Rainforest region.  Half-day, full-day and private journeys are all available.

Tasmania

wukalina Walk

The guided multi-day wukalina walk combines culture, nature and luxury in one of Australia’s most scenic landscapes, Tasmania’s magnificent Bay of Fires wilderness area. Stay in bespoke luxury accommodation, meet palawa Elders, hear creation stories and learn about traditional medicines and foods, feast on mutton bird, wallaby and doughboy dumplings (as well as plenty of seafood and some of Tasmania’s finest wines), try your hand at kelp and reed basket-making, learn how to belt out a rhythm on the clap sticks, and see kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, possums, whales, dolphins, and birdlife including black swans, sea eagles and arctic terns. The only group of humans to evolve in isolation for over 10,000 years, the culture and heritage of the palawa people is distinctly different from mainland Aboriginal cultures. Tours include guides, accommodation, meals and Tasmanian wines, and depart from the centre of Launceston.

Western Australia

Borrgoron Coast to Creek Tours

Bardi man Terry Hunter of Borrgoron Coast to Creek Tours enjoyed a unique bush childhood on Australia’s oldest continuously operating pearl farm – and you’ll learn all about this, and much more, on his captivating two-hour walking tour on Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula, north of Broome. Blazing red dirt meets bone-hued sand and turquoise seas in this ruggedly beautiful corner of the Kimberley region, which is lapped by the world’s largest tropical tides. Discover how the Bardi Jawi people have lived to the rhythm of the tides for tens of thousands of years as you explore the dramatic landscape surrounding Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm. Terry’s tour is highly interactive – you’ll forage for bush foods, learn how to find fresh water on salty tidal flats, seek out medicinal plants and hear extraordinary stories. Cooking oysters while they’re still stuck onto the rocks is a particular highlight – just one of many bush secrets the charismatic Custodian will share with you. 

Dale Tilbrook Experiences

With Dale Tilbrook, a Wardandi Bibbulmun woman, enjoy a captivating dive into Aboriginal food, medicine, culture and art with an emphasis on bush tucker as a food and medicine. During Dale’s two signature bush food experiences enjoy tasting a huge range of bush tucker like quandongs, Kakadu plum, native finger limes, muntries, salty grapes, native spinach, saltbush and other herbs and spices. Bush herbs are added to kangaroo and emu to provide extra flavour. In the ‘Aboriginal Art and Dreamtime Stories’ experience, the history of Aboriginal art and dot painting is explored, and participants create their own piece to take home. Dale’s storytelling skills come to the fore when she delves into ‘Local History and Culture’. Meet in the Swan Valley at Maalinup Aboriginal Gallery or Dale can meet you at your location. Bush Tucker Talk and Tasting is also available at Mandoon Estate Winery.

Kooljaman at Cape Leveque

Solar-powered wilderness retreat Kooljaman is run by the Bardi Jawi people. It is found on a 4WD-only road in the vast Kimberley region, on the tip of Western Australia’s saffron-hued Dampier Peninsula. Accommodation offerings include the rustic comfort of ocean-facing cabins, or large hillside safari tents blessed with far-reaching views. Cultural and nature-based experiences on offer range from four-hour coastal walks through mangroves, mud-crabbing and fish-trapping adventures, to meeting with local Aboriginal people, and day-long fishing cruises to nearby Sunday Island, where Traditional Owners will show you an old mission settlement and tell stories over billy tea.

Koomal Dreaming

Wadandi man and guide Josh Whiteland adds another dimension to Margaret River’s winemaking appeal by connecting you to its Noongar culture. Expect your skin to tingle as Josh plays the didgeridoo in Ngilgi Cave’s natural amphitheatre. He may share his knowledge of bush foods and medicine, show you how to make Aboriginal tools and fire, take you on a short walk on the Cape to Cape Track or to the top of Cape Naturaliste lighthouse for stunning ocean views. He could cook you a BBQ lunch where you can savour meats such as kangaroo seared by flames, with tangy native herbs in a tranquil bush setting. He could also take you to the spectacular Meelinup Regional Park, where dolphins and whales may be seen from its coastal ridges. Fish for species including herring, salmon and bream and forage for your salad for a sumptuous ‘catch and cook’ BBQ lunch. A day with Koomal Dreaming is unlike any other.

Ngurrangga Tours

Ngurrangga Tours’ Clinton Walker is a descendant of the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people, Traditional Owners of the West Pilbara in the north of Western Australia. And there’s no better tour guide to this vast swathe of red dirt than Walker, who holds deep knowledge of his country – ngurra – passed down from Elders and is passionate about bringing visitors to the Pilbara in general, but to the Birrup Peninsula in particular. The peninsula is virtually unknown yet is home to an estimated million Aboriginal rock carvings, some dating back as far as 40,000 years. He’s also armed with lightning-quick humour: on Ngurrangga’s Instagram feed, he describes a goanna scurrying away from the sound of his boots as “fast food”.

Wula Gura Nyinda Eco Cultural Adventures

Wula Gura Nyinda Eco Cultural Adventures offers a terrific array of tours ranging from two-hour to multi-day experiences in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area. Owner Darren ‘Capes’ Capewell offers an insider’s view of local Aboriginal culture through animal tracking, tasting bush tucker and traditionally caught seafood, and identifying the uses of various medicine plants, as well as didgeridoo lessons and Dreamtime stories. More active experiences include bush-tucker walks, kayaking and snorkelling adventures, stand-up paddleboard tours, camping safaris and fly/drive expeditions.