It was good to kick-start the making of my doco at Peppermint Ridge and CERES, even if they didn’t let me film much & some of my footage got deleted. I found a few things good to note before I bring my footage into the edit suite.

• Looking at native ingredients only through the sense of sight is boring as. The anise myrtle, strawberry gum, river mint and mountain pepper are just leaves – as you can see in my footage. The only couple of visuals that I found attractive were the insides of the finger-limes & the banksia flowers.
• They smell and taste super strong and florally though. Picking & tasting river mint is like putting a mentos on your tongue & sipping anise tea is like drinking liquorice. When you smell lemon myrtle leaves you have to smash them in your hand, and then your whole hand smells like lemon lollies.
• Honestly, what made the tour interesting was Anthony & Julie & Darren talking about their recipes. Finger-limes make a neat lime-curd tart. River mint pannacotta is the cafe-favourite. The oils of lemon myrtle, strawberry gum & anise myrtle plants make good ice-creams. Lemon myrtle is good on fish or in salads, anise myrtle with beef.

Deductions:

• Vision of the plants is good but match it with reactions to their taste and smell.
• Hearing people talk about how they’re used in recipes is important to construct an idea of how it tastes. Also seeing people pick/harvest them, bring them into the kitchen, chop them up, and then bring out the finished product.
• Have a contrast between the outside (the leaves, the garden & bush backdrop, the dirt under the harvester’s nails) & inside (cozy lighting, lots of wood panelling, velvet couches and set tables with vases of native flowers in them, steel knives in the kitchen and ceramic ramekins). Emphasise the rustic texture that we love about the bush and then the modern sleekness of the kitchen.

Focus on all of this when I do the Mabu Mabu interview!!