Preserving Food

This resource is related to the following Learning Area –

And responds to the following Enquiry Question –

Q29.	Did the Kombumerri people preserve their food and how was it stored?

Resource transcript –

Well, for a start, they had no refrigeration, no electricity so they were quite innovative. And they stored it in, I understand, baked clay jars, right? That would be part of their storage factor and I would say that if it wasn’t grain it was smoked meat. The other important area of storage was smoking and that went on for thousands of years. Smoking fish. Because people from up in the mountains, they’re coming down here for a holiday, dodged the winter and they want to take fish back. When Captain Cook sailed by here Sir Joseph Banks, the navigator recorded a series of smokes, smoke fires. That would be those families, maybe smoking the fish. But, smoking was a most important factor because if you smoke fish using bracken fern it’ll last for weeks. And going back up the mountains where it’s very cool, the air’s cool and light it’s got a better chance of surviving. The other one was honey. Honey and salt. They would be the prime factors given that there was no nothing electricity, no refrigeration at all.

[Voice off-screen] Salt and the trade routes.

Salt and the trade routes, yeah.