Last week the amazing Tamar came to the foraging workshop I have been running in Sydney for the past 15 years. Tamar is an avid forager, professional adventurer and holds several accreditations in wild skills from all over the world. It was a pleasure to meet such an incredible human, and exchange thoughts about what it means to engage with wilderness as a participant. I was stoked when she wrote this article below about her experience in my workshop. Read below. Stoked.

Dutch-born Tamar Valkenier gave up her promising career in 2015. Graduated cum laude as a criminologist as well as a psychologist, she was an Investigative Psychologist with the Dutch National Police. Although she loved her dream job, she wanted to experience a different reality beyond another horizon. She built her own bicycle and cycled towards Istanbul. Once set out, she fell from one adventure into the other: she lived with jungle tribes, hitchhiked in Panama, rock climbed in Laos, lived off the land in Australia, and spent lots of time among the eagle hunters of Mongolia

Tamar is now settling in Australia and is keen to take on every opportunity to expand her knowledge and connect with fellow foragers. Find her on social media (@Tamar Valkenier) and www.tamarvalkenier.com

Urban foraging with Diego Bonetto

‘I am a weed’. With his intact Italian accent a man of about 5.6 feet tall in shorts, a checkered shirt and a straw hat, carrying a wicker basket speaks to a group of students next to the train station in Tempe, Sydney. His foraging workshops are immensely popular and for good reason. As a performance artist Diego Bonetto knows how to engage an audience and for three hours we hang on to every word he says. ‘Just like the dandelions, brassicas, fennel and other edible plants we will discuss today, I came from overseas, trying to find my place here in Australia.’ Diego spends a few minutes gauging and acknowledging our pre-existing knowledge, placing us in the environment and promising to help us regain the knowledge that was so common just two generations ago, but many of us have now forgotten.

‘Foraging is not just about Free Food, though’. Diego pauses a second to let that sentence sink in. ‘It is about engaging with the resources around you in a responsible and respectful matter. We only forage where there is abundance’. Though this needed to be said, Diego quickly moves us on into the park to find what we can eat there. I can see him carefully weighing his words and tries to not talk too much ‘hippy-shit’ or ‘nerd-business’. His simple aim today is to give us bite-size practical tools to walk home with, to set us off on our own personal foraging path.

‘Look, this is shepherd’s purse, see the lovely heart-shaped seedpods on them?’ A great storyteller,  Diego explains to us where the name comes from and also how to use it. Members of the local Chinese community love to harvest this plant to put in their dumplings, there is plenty of it for everyone’. He continues showing us wild fennel, wild olives, fat hen, farmers friend, warrigal greens, sea blite, slender celery and many more delicious plants most of us pass by everyday without even knowing.

Three hours after we started down the rabbit hole, we stand around our harvest, snacking on handfuls of bright purple Dianella berries. Overwhelmed by everything there is to learn. ‘Don’t worry’, Diego assures us, ‘I’ll send you links to everything we talked about today and on my website there is a world of free resources for you to use’.

With those words Diego managed to fill my entire weekend with more research and foraging around my local hub. He convinced me to sign up with my local bush regeneration crew and over time I see my meals and health improving and my shopping bill reducing.

Perhaps a little warning would have been in place: “Foraging is highly addictive and contagious. Are you sure you want to get involved?”