The Australian bush has many wild foods both animal and vegetable. The number of edible plant foods alone runs into the thousands. The Aboriginal diet in the arid zones composed of around 80% plant foods and they lived quite happily on what was available growing wild. Accounts of the wild foods of Australia can be found in many journals of explorers, colonists, botanists and early ethnographers. Some early observers of the Aborigines were sympathetic and saw that they were better of gathering wild foods than developing agriculture. Explorer Major Mitchell wrote in 1848:

Tom Petrie who spent much of his younger life travelling with the "blacks" recalled in 1904;

There are three wild bush fruits commonly called a Quandong, the Desert Quandong is the fruit written about here. They are the Desert Quandong (Santulum acuminatum), the Blue Quandong (Elaeocarpus grandis) and the Bitter Quandong (Santulum murrayanum). The Desert Quandong and the Bitter Quandong are both of the same Genus (Santulum) the sandalwoods, whereas the Blue Quandong is from a different Genus altogether. The Blue Quandong is only commonly known as a Quandong because of its similar fruits. The Desert Quandong, being Sandalwood is a non-obligate root parasite, that is the tree obtains its nutrients from other tree roots. When young the sandalwoods will utilise grass roots. It is not only the fruit, which is used from the tree; the kernel is also used as a food and for decorative uses.

Blue Quandong: Elaeocarpus grandis

Silver Quandong, Brush Quandong, Blue fig, Coolan

The Blue Quandong grows mainly beside streams and in dense coastal and mountainous rainforests. It is not related to the Desert Quandong, the Quandong discussed here, but has similar stones to it. The fruit is blue, about 2 - 3 cm in diameter and are sour and insipid.

Ming

The Bitter Quandong resembles the Desert Quandong, the fruits are reddish in colour but they are very bitter in taste. The leaves are smaller than the Desert Quandong, 1.5 - 4 cm. The Bitter Quandong grows in mallee and woodlands.

Native peach, Sandalwood, Katunga, Burn-burn, Mangata

The Desert Quandong is a small tree or shrub found in the arid zones of Australia. The tree has paired leaves about 3 - 9 cm long. The fruits are shiny red and sometimes yellow 2 - 3 cm in diameter. The Desert Quandong grows in woodlands on sandy and stony soils. In the northern territory the Desert Quandong is becoming scarce most likely as a result of camel grazing.

The overland explorers Charles Sturt and John Stuart would probably have died of scurvy in central Australia, had they not eaten the wild fruits including the Quandong on their travels. Early settlers used the fruit of the Desert Quandong in jams, pies and jellies. They also dried the fruit like the Aborigines to keep them for future use. Explorer E.J.Eyre said that the fruit "makes excellent puddings or preserves, for which purpose it is now extensively used by Europeans". More recently the Quandong is often used in wild food restaurants and sold as jams and pies. The Aborigines often ate the nutritious oily kernels of the Quandong. Some trees produce sweet almond flavoured kernels while others produce a distasteful kernel. The distaste in some kernels is a result a pungent aromatic oil, methyl benzoate.

The seeds of the Quandong, both Desert and Bitter are round, pale and knobbly. The Early settlers used these for making necklace beads, stud buttons and Chinese checker marbles. Today, they are only rarely used for these purposes, by locals and art and craft shops. Occasionally small

operators use the wood as craft wood.

The CSIRO division of horticulture in Adelaide has been conducting research into cultivating the Desert Quandong since 1973. They hope to turn it into a commercially viable crop. The main problem in cultivating the Quandong is that it is a root parasite and so needs a host plant on which it can be grown. The CSIRO maintains a Quandong plot near Adelaide where the plants are grafted and selected. The Quandong is a salt tolerant species that is suitable for semiarid land. One enterprising farmer has established a Quandong plantation at broken hill where it is common naturally. Some farmers in South Australia have also had success growing Quandongs; one farmer in Quorn S.A. has a orchard that is successfully irrigated using bore water with a salinity of 4000 ppm. The main product of these orchards is the fruit, and now as the wild foods market is just opening up a future for these orchards looks good.

The CSIRO scientists are trying to develop a cultivar that is more tolerant of to drought and salinity and are also high yielding and more palatable. The main problem at the moment with the Quandong is the occasional off tasting fruit and the often distasteful nut The CSIRO scientists see this as a "major obstacle to their commercial exploitation as a nut crop".

When in full fruit nothing can exceed the Quandongs beauty, drooping beneath its crimson load. The ground around a Quandong tree is usually littered with old seeds. The Quandong is both a beautiful tree and a delicious fruit found wild in Australia.