UNSUNG HEROES
THE BUSH TUCKER EVANGELISTS WORDS BEN SMITHURST
Personal tragedy inspired Gayle and Mike Quarmby to work with Outback communities—and bring native Australian grub to the world.
Gayle: “My father was left for three days in a pile of his dead mates on the Somme. He was being put into a mass grave when they realised he was still alive and so he returned to Australia quite badly injured. He couldn’t return to being a farmer, so he headed out into the desert on camels—as you do. “He reached the centre in 1932 and he came across a young man who looked at my father’s paintings and was really inspired. That friendship between my dad and Albert— Albert Namatjira—was the foundation of today’s Aboriginal art industry. Albert wasn’t allowed to paint traditionally because of the missionaries. “Anyway, by the 1950s I was 40
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this little kid running around with the children of Aboriginal artists while they were painting over there under a gum tree with dad. And learning about native bush foods. Going forward to 1999, Mike and I were working in a big commercial propagating nursery in Reedy Creek, South Australia, where we seeded 150,000 trees a day. And our 20-year-old son, Daniel, was killed. Coming back from the funeral, I remembered dad’s words to me: life can kneecap you at any time, but you have to choose to stand up and go on a healing journey. That’s what he did. So we did, too. “I’d kept contact with my old friends in the desert, so we went back and thought, right, let’s see
There have been so many discovery moments out bush, tasting something totally new that absolutely blew us away!
if we can create an industry that would create jobs for people in the bush. Mike is a horticultural genius, so it took us two minutes to decide we’d do something with bush tucker. A lot of it was disappearing because of feral grasses and overgrazing. “So we pulled our super and over the next decade we put $1.5 million into setting up the Outback Pride project. We engaged with 3000 Aboriginal people to train them towards a pathway into an industry. At the same time, we had to actually create the industry draw. So we created Outback Pride and Outback Pride Fresh. And we handed our three businesses into Aboriginal ownership two years ago exactly. We’re now in our
