Collaboration with Dale Chapman
We are very pleased to announce an important new collaboration with Dale Chapman at the Cooroy Community Permaculture Gardens. Dale has joined the Leadership Group and is establishing our native bush tucker garden to increase awareness of the importance of native plants for medicine, food and other traditional uses. Over the next year she plans to run workshops and demonstrations on how to harvest and use these plants, and to promote the understanding of aboriginal culture and connection to land.
Dale has lived in the Eumundi / Pomona area since she was 13 years old. After completing her high school certificate she started an apprenticeship in Brisbane as a chef. In the late 1980s she fell in love with bush foods, and started incorporating them into her menu as Head Chef at Cafe Le Monde in Hastings Street, Noosa. At that time very few people knew much about eating bush foods, but in the last 15 years there has been huge interest all over the world.
In 1990 Dale started The Dilly Bag Company, where she ran workshops, originally to inform aboriginal people about bush foods, especially their nutritional and medicinal value. But interest quickly extended to the wider community, and Dale found that even international visitors wanted to know more about the plants that had sustained indigenous people for so long.
Dale is a founding member of Slow Food Noosa, and has represented Australia in Italy and Japan as part of the Slow Food Movement. She is an author, university lecturer and mentor, has run many programs with schools and community groups, and has developed her own range of relishes, jams, teas, chutneys and dukkas from bush tucker plants.
This is an exciting opportunity enabling us to expand the depth of our perspective at the community garden, broaden our experiences, awareness, appreciation and knowledge.
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