australia is the world's sixth largest country, and is made up of the australian continent, the island of tasmania, and a number of smaller islands - for at least 40,000 years before the arrival of british colonizers, in the late stages of the 18th century, indigenous groups called 'aborigines' made their homes in this region, speaking at least 250 different linguistic dialects and following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

experts at finding food in the vast australian landscape, their diet always included fish, kangaroo, emu, snakes and other meat, as well as berries, roots, and honey - while their lifestyle would now be described as difficult, these aboriginal groups thrived under these conditions.

the british, who arrived in 1770, did not recognize many of the foods that were considered staples in the aboriginal diet, and were unused to dealing with a scarcity of water - however, these european settlers immediately began to transform the land to establish a more familiar set of ingredients.