Marksie's Stockman's Camp Tucker Night

Friends in Alice Springs had recommended a sunset bushtucker event with Geoff Marks, a bushman raconteur who has spent decades living in Katherine learning about bushtucker from the Indigenous elders.

We share a table with a friendly extended family of Melburnians relishing the NT warmth.



Marksie makes us close our eyes to go time travel. The site is set to whisk us back in time to 1922 on Wave Hill station. We are Indigenous stockmen gathering by the campfire outside the cookhouse in the evening for dinner amongst dozens of campovens. In the distance bush curlews wail.

We are served a special beef stew with a dozen bush herbs, including lemon myrtle, wattleseed and bush tomato, in a rich sauce. Excellent herb damper soaks up the fragrant juices. Jungle juice made from pineapple, lemon myrtle and other herbs, washes it all down.

For dessert, there are the most delicious mini scones topped with davidson plum jam and cream.

To wash dessert down, we need some billy tea made from strong tea leaves plus a eucalypt leaf. Marksie has fun getting us to do some 'billy spinning' to settle the leaves at the bottom of the billy. He recounts how some tourists biff themselves when they try. Once, he even persuaded a French lady that the Australian citizenship ceremony requires proficiency in billy spinning, so he now playfully provides a mock billy spinning certificate.


The tall tales and stories come thick and fast. American tourists feature high on the list of joke victims. Not least are the perennìal Aussie jokes about dreaded drop bears that attack from low lying branches. When Americans insist on seeing the mythical creatures, Marksie says he's shot them all and made hats out of their fur.


Pausing to let us know it's a bit rude, Marksie knocks us out with his parting story as told by the historic figure of famous drover Jack Absalom many years ago to a blushing 17-year old Marksie:


A barra swimming in the river is keenly following a blowfly flying six inches above the surface. When the blowfly drops, the barra will leap and catch it. On the other side of the river, a croc is getting ready to leap and snap up the barra when it leaps. A hunter hidden in the bushes on the riverbank has his gun trained on the croc to nail him when he jumps for the barra. A cheese sandwich poking out of the hunter's left trouser pocket and about to fall on the ground, has attracted all the attention of a mouse ready to nab it when the hunter shoots the croc. Meanwhile, a feral cat is fully focused on catching the mouse as soon as it takes the hunter's sandwich.


The barra leaps to grab the fly; the croc jumps to snatch the barra; the hunter shoots the croc; the sarnie falls out of the pocket, the mouse grabs it; the feral cat pounces, misses as it knocks into a branch, and falls into the water.


Moral of this story: when the fly falls six inches, the pussy gets wet!

The evening went well and Marksie mentioned that, after 20 years, this would be his last season doing the event. His business is up for sale and Marksie is preparing to go travel Australia again gathering more outrageous tales, no doubt.

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Marksie's Marksie's Stockman's Camp; Katherine; Northern Territory; Dinner