A delicious answer to a wild problem.
Apart from some high-profile publicity stunts and small grassroots producers, Australia has been slow to realise the potential worth of feral foods. Invasive plant species and unsustainable animal populations are an environmental, and economic, disaster – but what if they could also be a food source?
Thanks to a few pioneering producers and chefs, businesses across Australia are starting to embrace these formerly overlooked, highly abundant food sources.
Using these ingredients not only supports sustainable land care by reducing their ecological impact; it also enables chefs to craft creative menus with bold, unique flavours.
Southern Seagreens at Port Philip Bay in Victoria farms native golden kelp, something one of the company co-founders, Cam Hines, refers to as “the most sustainable crop in the world”.
“Seaweed requires no soil, fresh water or fertiliser, and is five times more efficient at mopping up CO2 and nitrogen than trees,” he says. “And it helps deacidify the sea.” The sustainability credentials, and potential, of Hines’ product had all the judges talking at this years’ delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards, with Hines’ product sailing through from state judging to become a National Finalist.
Related story: The 2025 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards National Finalists have been revealed
Southern Seagreens also has a permit that allows Hines and his team to dive for another edible seaweed, invasive wakame. A non-native species, it established itself in Australia after being inadvertently transported on the ballast of boats from Asia.
“It’s an annual, so it dies off, but before it does, it releases up to a million spores,” Hines says. “It’s very fast-growing, and so crowds out the native species.”
Chef and delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards National Judge Jo Barrett is a fan – both of the company’s sustainable production ethos and the produce itself – having used the wakame at her former restaurant, Little Picket.
“We would rehydrate it and add it to butter sauce for finishing pan-seared fish,” she says. “We’ve also pickled it and added it to textured rice, in salad dressings, and at home, blended into powder to finish broccoli pasta sauces.
“It adds a lot of texture, colour, minerality and subtle saltiness.”
After Little Picket, Jo Barrett herself went on to become a founding member of Wildpie, a ready-to-bake range of premium pies and sausage rolls that uses wild meat from invasive species including deer, wallaby and goat; working in collaboration with Discovered Wildfoods, the winners of the Sustainability category in last year’s Harvey Norman delicious. Produce Awards.
Related story: Jo Barrett heeds the call of the wild with pie venture
“Having access to sustainably harvested wild or grown foods is a privilege,” says Barrett. “We are lucky to have these ingredients and to have people who go to the effort to produce them in a way that protects the natural ecosystem.”
Another problematic species finding favour with chefs is wallaby, an animal which the owner of Bruny Island Game Meats, Richard Clarke, says causes a significant amount of damage to pastures and the natural understory of the bush.
Under crop protection permits, he sells meat from Tasmanian wild-caught wallabies, shot on local farms, to restaurants and hotels, through premium butchers and in quality grocery stores.
“As people are trying it, they’re understanding its value as a clean source of protein and as a valid alternative to other meats,” Clarke says.
Being wild, rather than farmed, the wallaby meat contains no chemicals or hormones that are often found in intensively farmed animals, he says.
“And the animals are not loaded onto trucks or taken to abattoirs live, which increases stress levels.”
Wallaby meat is low in fat, so Clarke says it’s vital not to overcook it.
“It’s best served rare to medium,” he says. “We cook the steaks for a couple of minutes on each side and then rest for a further couple of minutes before serving.
“Some of the high-end restaurants actually serve it raw.”
Unlike wallabies, water buffalo are not native to Australia, having been imported into the country in the 19th century. As the settlements they were brought in for were abandoned over the 20th century, feral populations of buffalo ballooned, largely across the Top End. To this day, very few Australian producers have sought to meaningfully explore water buffalo as a source of meat or milk.
At the forefront of the fledgling industry are Elena and Andrei Swegen, of Burraduc Buffalo Dairy, south of Forster in NSW; 2025 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards finalists, and 2023 Producer of the Year.
The Swegens used one of two water buffalo sub-species, the Riverine water buffalo, in dairy production.
“Our daughter was studying Vet Science at Sydney Uni and was doing one of her placements in Beatrice Hill, a buffalo research farm in the Northern Territory,” says Elena. The research station’s mandate was to explore cross breeding programs that could potentially transition feral buffalo populations into a suitable source of meat and dairy.
“She loved the buffaloes and how intelligent, tough, healthy and resilient they were compared to dairy cows, and convinced us to trial them for milking and mozzarella.”
While the Swegen’s herd is largely genetically distinct from feral populations, the family has single-handedly advanced the perception and profile of buffalo products in Australia. Registered as a wildlife sanctuary, Burraduc’s buffalo herd is protected from predators by guardian dogs. The calves are not removed from their mothers until weaning, so they remain stress-free during their lactation, and the milk is bottled and the cheese made on the farm.
In addition to mozzarella, Burraduc makes buffalo feta, curd cheese, yoghurt, cultured cream, cottage cheese, an Eastern European-style fermented milk and scamorza – a semi-soft stretched curd cheese.
By looking at feral species as a solution rather than a problem, we have the potential to transform our environment, as well as our menus.
Related story: Join us at the 2025 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards.
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