LIVING ON THE BUSH

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23803, 24 November 1942, Page 3

LIVING ON THE BUSH

NEW COURSE FOR TROOPS (0.C.) SYDNEY, November 18. Australian troops are to be instructed on how to live on the bush like the aborigines to make them independent of ordinary supplies if cut off or isolated. Except to the aborigines and to a few experienced bushmen, the Australian outback, which is sparse in game, birds, and native fruit, is a land of desolation. But naturalists say that a man need never starve if he has the knowledge they possess. To impart this knowledge, the authorities have appointed Mr Melbourne Ward, of the Australian Museum, Sydney, to the Army Education Service. They realise that men, separated in an operation, or cut off in a flanking movement, may have to fend for themselves until help arrives. Mr Ward will teach troops how to subsist in such circumstances, when otherwise they may have starved to death under a tree that could keep them alive. He will identify for them roots of certain trees which contain water, weeds with palatable bulbs, certain shrubs and plants, such as lucerne leaves, nettles, saltbush, and milkthistles with the qualities of spinach. The troops will learn that frogs dug from fried mud beds will yield four teaspoonsful of water when squeezed, and a delicacy with a flavour of walnuts and cream may be discovered in the white and pink witchetty or pelattie grubs found on red gum and blue gum trees, honeysuckle, wattles, and mallee roots. Ants’ eggs toasted on a hot stone taste like bread, and tl.e bark of a certain tree, when crushed up and thrown into water, will dope fish and bring them to the surface within an hour. Snake flesh is nourishing and quite appetising to a hungry and desperate man. The bush diet, said Mr W ard - ma y not put on weight, but it will keep a man alive for weeks.