Anita Ratara Mbitjana

This one is Paraltja, we eat them in the gum tree leaf. We get a big sheet or canvas or something put all the leaves down and then collect all the paralja that falls off. Put it in a plastic bag.

When we was a school kid, our mum and aunty and grandmother used to fill up a lot, a lot, a lot of sweet one, yes. We used to eat them, night time, when you come back from school. Paraltja there at home. When we get bigger, old, we go. This place name, sugar creek he got a lot of this one, paraltja, in the gum tree there. Lot of birds are there. Must have always been like that.

This two yellow and orange ones is bush tucker, we call them katjira (bush tomato), and this purple one that is kupaarta (bush plum). This one here grows on the mulga tree nice and sweet when they green. We call them ngaraaka (bush bean). We also got langua (bush banana), pmurlpa (quandong) and rraatninga (bush passionfruit).

This brown one is under the ground, we call Latjia. Arrkarnka hangs in a big gum tree and is sweet like a coconut. Urrarlpa from up in the hills and those green leaves are inmurta (mustard greens), same like what Hayley (Anita’s daughter)’s pot is about.