The Origins of the word Myrniong

The following Publication was a report from Bary Dowling, reporting from the botany building at Monash University.

Aborigines found food near at hand and even underfoot

AT LEAST half the food eaten by 'Victorian Aboriginals' was plant food, most of it collected by women from beneath the ground. Plant food (you're standing on it, in the bush) can be found beside streams and on plains un-grazed by European stock.

Dr Beth Cook a botanist at Monash University has identified more than 700 plant species that were eaten or used in other ways by 'Victorian Aboriginals'. With chief horticultural officer Robert McClure, she has planted a selection of them at Monash, it is a fascinating exercise.

For instance, all ground orchid tubers are edible and it seems that the way they were taken (with a digging stick and with suitable time to recover) may have been beneficial to the plants Beth Gott worked on a patch of greenhoods taking all bulbs readily visible but not sieving the ground to get the last. After 14 months the new rosettes showed a 74 percent recovery.

Cumbungi, or bulrush, was a staff of life along the Murray where the starch of the root was eaten and the fibre used as string, as was the split leaf. The whole leaf was used for basket-making. Now Cumbungi is regarded as the curse of the irrigation channel.

Another staff of life was murrnong or Yam-daisy and Major Mitchell reports the western plains as being yellow with its flowers. It is often mistaken for dandelion but the leaves are long and with yam-daisy and Major Mitchell reports Yam-daisy is palatable to stock; sheep not only eat the flowers and leaves but dig for the roots. After five years’ grazing of early Melbourne, an Aborigine, Moona Moona, is on the record as stating; “The murrnong has gone”. At Myrniong, named for the plant, it has not been possible to find a single specimen, yet I have often seen it in light bushland and un-grazed plains areas. When the root was taken the top was frequently replanted to grow on.

Most native lilies have tuberous roots which were eaten, including early nancies, blue stars, chocolate lilies, milkmaids and garland lilies. All these species are at Monash, also many orchids. Spring is the time to see them in flower.

Golden, silver and black wattles produce edible gum and the trees were notched to get a regular supply. Grass trees (Xanthorrhoea australis) offered much with the bases of the young leaves and the growing points of the flowers providing food and honey, the dry flower stem being used for spears and for fire-making, and the resin for cement.

Banksia flowers were soaked in water for a sweet drink, the young leaves of pigface (both coastal and inland species), were eaten but do not try the older leaves or your month will turn dry from the tannin. Pith from the roots of the tall bracken fern and from the crowns of tree-ferns provided starch.

Fruits in Victoria were not numerous but included lillypilly (a bit bland and do not eat the seed), ruby saltbush, grey mistletoe which grows on wattles, kangaroo apples and cherry ballart. This last is a parasitic tree and the two specimens in the botany garden at Monash are only a few centimetres tall. There are seedlings, which Robert McClure has raised along side the seedlings of yellow mallee which have already hooked their roots into the host plant. Clever ballart, clever propagator.

Beth Gott says that few Victorians native fruits are poisonous, but beware of the kangaroo apple unless you know it well, for there is an introduced solanum that looks similar and is poisonous.

When possible, roots were cooked using the system of fire pit-and-stones common throughout the Pacific region. Un-exploding stones such as scoria or clay balls were heated in the pit and the fire swept out. The pit was then lined with damp grass and the food cached in it. Then the lot was covered with earth and left, perhaps overnight.

Another piece of historical doctrine suggested that Myrniong may have been named after a large cooking pit that the Aborigines used along the Murray floodplains. The source of this publication is unknown - "0n the Murray floodplain, the larger mounds probably served as islands from which hunting and fishing excursions set out during flood time. During dry seasons and in areas where flooding was unlikely, the mounds were comfortable campsites where tools were made and large cooking-pits (Myrn-yongs) constructed. Occasionally disused mounds became burial places for the dead."