Prue Slatyer, Trish Hodge and Tim Jarvis at the launch of Palawa tunapri
Trish Hodge’s book Palawa tunapri topped her publisher’s (Fuller’s) bestseller list this week, having been launched in Hobart last week. On Monday 17 November, Tim Jarvis of Fullers Bookshop welcomed the approximately 600 audience members and told how the book was developed after the 2022 AGHS national conference in Hobart when Trish was ‘greeted rapturously’ as a speaker. Tim acknowledged the partnership with AGHS through Francesca Beddie’s editing, Prue Slatyer’s project management and a grant from AGHS’s Kindred Spirits Fund. With book design by Julie Hawkins’, Palawa tunapri is a beautiful book compiling Indigenous knowledge Trish has collected over 20 years about the use of Tasmanian native plants for food, medicine, tools and as markers of seasonal change.
After Tim’s introduction, Trish was joined in a panel discussion by Gina Chick, author and winner of television’s Alone Australia, and Ryk Goddard, host of ABC Radio’s Hobart Breakfast. She explained how she had gained her knowledge growing up in the bush, walking with elders and helping her father run bush tucker tours. She has also researched the journals of the early explorers, especially the French, who wrote about their observations of Aboriginal life. Trish now has her own business sharing her cultural knowledge, which she says is ‘sacred but not secret’. She met Gina when she was the edible plants consultant for the television program Alone filmed in Tasmania’s takayana.
Trish eats traditional foods every day. Her favourites include pigface fruits (delicious with abalone), native cherries, wattle seeds, native pepper, kunzea flowers and leaves, and citrus-scented baeckia as a hot drink.
Her aspirations for the book are for us all to use it to care for Country:
Country will live without us, but we can’t live without Country.
Although the book has a Tasmanian focus, many of the plants listed are found in mainland Australia as well as Tasmania. Palawa tunapri can be purchased through the AGHS shop – click here.