Back To Stone Age Diet: Aussies Live Off Land

Northern Advocate, 17 December 1942, Page 6

Back To Stone Age Diet: Aussies Live Off Land

(Special)

SYDNEY, This Day,

Grilled python steaks and broiled goannas are regular items on the menu for Australian soldiers whu are receiving special jungle warfare training at a new army school. The men know the day may come when they will be cut off from supplies, and their lives will depend on finding edible reptiles insects and plants in the jungles. Their instructor, in what he describes as “back to the stone age diet” is Mel Ward, well-known Australian naturalist and war correspondent, who braved grilled snake. He declared it “tasted like fish, with a dash of chicken tossed in.”

In this Australian army austerity school troops in combat training' learn the arts of concealment, silent movement, trail blazing, and to find their direction without compass. But the most unusual, and most popular training, is that given by Ward, who teaches the men how “to live off the land" in the inhospitable Australian hush and jungles of northern islands.