Bunya Nuts only drop their ripe fruits in abundance every 3 years, so when the season arrives, festive abundance emanates from the Aussie bush.
These native Australian trees have been around since Jurassic times!
Just see, feel and breathe the ruthless spiky leaves, tall trees, and monstrous (up to) 10kg cones. It makes sense that dinosaurs used to eat this as food (whole cone)!
Today, people avoid parking their cars under these trees, put up warning signs “CAUTION: Large and deadly bunya cones fall here”, and unknowingly or indolently dispose of this free food as garden waste.
But traditionally, there would be large “Bunya gatherings” of indigenous tribes travelling from long and far to feast on Bunya and community love.
There are reports of tribes from as far away as South Australia & Western Australia travelling to the main spot – Bunya Mountains, 200km NW of Brisbane for these gatherings.
This native pine (Araucaria bidwillii) promotes the Vedic energy “Lakṣmī”- abundance of nourishment that connects us to the cycles and rhythms of nature’s intelligence.
“Mother Divine Feminine” (Devi / Lakṣmī ) expresses herself through seasonal rhythms of climatic patterns and cyclical harvesting periods.
She also triggers the recipients of food harvests and weather shifts to reciprocate to Mother Nature with reverence, which ultimately aligns the intelligence of that individual towards the level of Nature’s intelligence.
A cone can have bonyi 20-100 nuts, so make a social date with your friends & family to process together and have a feast for the soul before a feast for the belly.
We de-shelled a bunch for cooking in the next couple weeks, and left most of them in their shell to store for longer.
So many ways you can prepare and eat them: make flour, pizza, bread, dosas, pesto, gnocchi (tastes like nutritious potatoes when boiled), roasted, add them to curries, fermented drinks, etc.
People even study Fibonacci’s math with Bunya cones!
Thanks to Bundjalung country and indigenous wisdom for providing and maintaining this food.
Sprouts
You may come across some nuts that are sprouting. Particularly if your bunya nuts have been sitting in moist conditions. If you do, plant these in the ground and spread the Bunya love!
This is what the tribes did on their way home from the Bunya gatherings.
Thanks to Bundjalung country and indigenous wisdom for providing and maintaining this food.
Thanks to @om_cade @soledelriccio @daliagencher @t.karacsay @mousa_meditation for feeding our soul and belly.
