hink of Australian cuisine and you might imagine meat pies, smashed avocado and the time Tom Hanks (incorrectly) slathered Vegemite on toast – an international incident that was covered by press in France, India and Indonesia. But these dishes don’t fully represent Australia’s multicultural food history, or the fact we’re home to the oldest continuous culture on the planet. Indigenous Australians might be the world’s first bakers, according to a 65,000-year-old Kakadu grindstone, and there’s evidence Chinese people interacted with Aboriginal people centuries before Captain Cook landed here in 1770. “There was more going on than people think,” says Charmaine O’Brien, author of and . “It’s nothing like what’s basically evolved since the second World War,” says the food historian, but early palates weren’t as bland and
