UNDER THE TAMARIND TREE

WHY THE SUDDEN

INTEREST IN THE

TAMARIND TREE?

Brisbane is a city with spectacular lush tropical plants, trees, and parklands. In the suburb of Red Hill, a favourite tree lined street of mine became an investigation into the particular trees that were different to others in the area. It was the seed pods scattered across the footpath and beneath the trees, everywhere that peaked my interest. My artist eye was made aware as my feet crushed the organic matter with each footstep. The semi-decaying skeletal organic pods were like tiny developed organisms that magically and individually were like mini worlds. I obsessively collected them. Armed with a basket I gathered what some would call debris, I thought treasure. Scattered everywhere, on the footpath and under the trees nature working its magic. What was collected was taken home and developed into a series of images with varying experimental backdrops. Coming from always working with a minimalist agenda I suddenly found my focus on the organic disarray of the crushed pods excited by their beauty. I continued with a desire for investigating the Tamarind tree and resulting in a further series based on the tamarind.

As various opportunities arose to chat with small gatherings of people, sometimes families who have gathered on the footpath at the foot of selected trees to collect the pods from the trees. They came prepared with baskets and long poles to reach the pods at the top of the tree.

All cooks/chefs are well aware of “tamarind”. For some it is a family ritual collecting Tamarind pods dry and mature on the tree, then they are removed or shaken to fall on the ground. After collecting many baskets of the dry pods family members gather around the table and with many hands tamarind chunks emerge until the next harvest. After the desire to research the history of “tamarind” trees in Brisbane/Queensland became a passionate quest to investigate. It emerged that the Tamarind trees were not that common.

Historically some were planted in early days, after research I found there is one Tamarind tree in the Brisbane city Botanical Gardens thought to predate the formation of the Botanic Gardens, cultivated since 1828. It is a beautiful balanced tree in a prominent position contributes significantly to the gardens landscape value It is indigenous to Tropical Africa but found wildly distributed throughout the tropical belt from Africa to South Asia ,Northern Australia, and throughout Oceania, Southeast Asia , Taiwan and China.

https://trusttrees.org.au/tree/QLD/Brisbane/Brisbane_City_Botanic_Gardens_Alice_Street_15

Image: Tree Botanical Gardens Brisbane below:

Particularly when occasionally you come across a family sitting on the ground gathering pods fallen from the tree. Also with a large pole to shake the branches and collect the pods into a basket. The families, mostly of Asian origin were expert Tamarind cooks and happy to share their knowledge on how to process and cook with it.

Tamarind trees

as the

‘accidentaL Heroes’

in – Indigenous

Australia’s

ancient contacts

The presence of tamarind trees (Tamarus indica) in the northern part of Australia are indicators of the ancient contacts between Australian First Nations peoples and trepangers from Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. For 300 years, as early as the mid 17th century, people from Makassar set sail to the northern coastal areas to catch and process the sea cucumbers known as  trepang or beche de mer  before shipping the commodity back to Makassar and selling them to Chinese merchants.  

Tamarind trees grew around the Makassan trepangers’ camps on the coastal areas, and today, the trees have become a heritage botanical symbol for the Indigenous people in Australia's top end whenever they remember and retelling stories of the trepangers from Makassar. ‘Your ancestors planted the tamarind trees in here…’ that’s how Timmy Djawa Murrnmurrnga Burarrwanga, a leader of Yolngu community explained about our shared history through the trepang industry during my visit to Yirrkala, northeast Arnhemland, in December 2018.  

If there was no urgency to plant the tamarind trees for food supply and there is no tradition of tree planting that existed in Sulawesi’s maritime culture, why have we found tamarind trees in Arnhem Land, the Kimberley and other parts of Australia’s northern coasts as well as in transit islands in East Indonesia? One might find the answer by simply imagining this daily activity: the trepangers cooked their foods and threw away the food waste, including the tamarind seeds, around their camp sites. Just like other organic waste, the food waste was easily washed away or buried on the shores. However, nature has provided enough ‘nutrition’ for the tamarind seeds to grow. So, the tamarind trees are the ‘accidental heroes’ in our shared history and culture.  

Excerpt https://www.portsidereview.com/lily-yulianti-farid

Lily Yulianti Farid is a published author with expertise in cultural links between Australia and Indonesia.