My best friend was Aboriginal. She taught me about 'bush tucker'

Host: The sun was melting into the horizon, setting the outback sky on fire. The earth below glowed amber, the air humming with heat and life. Dust rose with every footstep, golden and ghostlike, as if the land itself breathed.

A campfire crackled in the center of the clearing, its flames whispering to the stars that would soon arrive. Jack sat cross-legged by the fire, a tin cup in his hands, his face shadowed and still. Jeeny sat opposite him, her hair undone, eyes reflecting the firelight, the outback’s vast silence wrapping them both in a kind of ancient calm.

Host: Tonight, they spoke not of politics, nor of progress, but of memory, of heritage, of the earth’s quiet wisdom — sparked by a line from Isabel Lucas, who once said:
“My best friend was Aboriginal. She taught me about ‘bush tucker’ — the food of the land, the different things you could eat if you got lost in the bush, like grasses and berries. There’s this tree called the billygoat plum — the fruit is quite nice.”

Jeeny: “It’s such a gentle thing to say,” she whispered, watching the embers twist upward. “But there’s something profound in it — that friendship wasn’t about teaching survival, but about sharing belonging. Knowing what feeds you when the world forgets you.”

Jack: “You make it sound poetic,” he said, his voice low, gravelly, like stones shifting under weight. “But it’s just practical knowledge. Bush tucker — the science of survival. Food, water, direction. Nothing mystical about it.”

Jeeny: “Isn’t that what makes it beautiful? That something so simple, so earth-born, carries the weight of culture? That her friend didn’t just teach her how to survive, but how to see the land — to listen to it.”

Jack: “You sound like one of those city poets who come here for a weekend, write about the red dirt, then fly back to their air-conditioned truths.”

Jeeny: “And you sound like a man who’s forgotten that dirt is truth.”

Host: The fire cracked, sending sparks spiraling upward like tiny prayers. The sky deepened, the colors fading to blue-black, pierced by the first star. A kangaroo’s silhouette moved briefly in the distance, then vanished into shadows.

Jack: “You romanticize it, Jeeny. You see wisdom, I see instinct. The Aboriginal people learned to live off the land because they had to. It wasn’t about spiritual connection, it was necessity.”

Jeeny: “And what’s wrong with that? Necessity is the purest form of truth. We only call something spiritual when we’ve forgotten how to live without it.”

Jack: “So survival is sacred now?”

Jeeny: “Of course. To know the plants, the grasses, the trees — to know which ones will heal and which ones will kill — that’s not just knowledge, Jack. That’s relationship. That’s intelligence older than cities.”

Jack: “But it’s still just instinct dressed in myth.”

Jeeny: “No, it’s memory dressed in reverence.”

Host: A gust of wind passed through, stirring the flames, carrying the scent of eucalyptus and smoke. The night insects began their orchestra, their rhythm steady, timeless.

Jeeny: “Do you know the billygoat plum?” she asked suddenly.

Jack: “No.”

Jeeny: “It’s small, pale, sweet — full of Vitamin C, more than oranges. Grows where it wants, when it wants. It doesn’t ask the soil for permission. It just gives, quietly.”

Jack: “And?”

Jeeny: “And maybe we could learn something from that.”

Jack: “You think the answer to civilization is a piece of fruit?”

Jeeny: “Maybe the answer is in remembering fruit. In remembering what the earth gives before we take everything else.”

Host: He looked away, eyes fixed on the dark horizon, where the red earth met eternity.

Jack: “You think the modern world could ever go back to that? Back to eating wild berries and talking to trees? We’ve built too much. We’ve gone too far.”

Jeeny: “It’s not about going back, Jack. It’s about listening forward. Taking what’s ancient and carrying it through the future, not away from it.”

Jack: “And how do you suggest we do that? By romanticizing lost traditions?”

Jeeny: “By honoring them. By not calling them lost. They were never lost — we just stopped hearing them. Isabel Lucas wasn’t talking about nostalgia. She was talking about connection — about being taught, not by books, but by the land itself.”

Jack: “Maybe the land doesn’t want to teach us anymore. Maybe it’s tired of students who take and forget.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe it’s time we became better students.”

Host: The fire dimmed, its core glowing deep orange, like a heartbeat in ashes. The stars had multiplied, filling the sky with silence.

Jack: “You ever wonder why the people who knew this land best are the ones who lost it?”

Jeeny: “They didn’t lose it, Jack. We stole it. And worse — we forgot what we stole.”

Jack: “So what do we do now? Apologize to the dirt?”

Jeeny: “No. We listen to it. We learn again. The Aboriginal concept of Country — it’s not just land. It’s family, law, story, song. It’s the idea that you don’t own the earth — you belong to it.”

Jack: “That sounds poetic, but the world runs on ownership. Land titles, borders, deeds. You can’t run a civilization on belonging.”

Jeeny: “And yet, the civilizations that forgot belonging are the ones that are dying.”

Host: A silence fell — not the awkward kind, but the sacred kind that comes when truth lands and the soul exhales.

Jack: “You think one quote, one friendship, one lesson about bush tucker — that changes anything?”

Jeeny: “No. But it reminds us of what we’ve forgotten — that knowledge doesn’t always come from books or universities. Sometimes it comes from a hand showing you a leaf, or a story told beside firelight. It comes from humility — from the earth feeding you when you have nothing left.”

Jack: “And what happens when we’re too proud to listen?”

Jeeny: “Then the earth stops speaking.”

Host: The fire collapsed inward, embers glowing like sleeping eyes. The wind shifted, carrying voices — faint, ancient, the kind that seem to rise from the soil itself.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right,” he whispered. “Maybe the greatest intelligence isn’t in machines, or money, or maps — it’s in remembering the taste of the land.”

Jeeny: “Yes,” she smiled. “In remembering that even when you’re lost, the earth still offers food — if you know how to see it.”

Host: The fire died, the stars brightened, and the land stretched in all directions — vast, ancient, alive.

Host: And as they sat in that silence, the kind that only Australia’s heart can hold, it became clear:

The billygoat plum, the grasses, the berries — they were never just food.
They were lessons.
Reminders that knowledge begins in gratitude,
and that to eat from the earth is also to belong to it.

Host: And perhaps that was Isabel Lucas’s quiet truth —
that wisdom is not found in what you build,
but in what you remember when the world grows too loud to hear the land still whispering your name.