Looking up the quandong

I use Google a lot, both at work and at home. At work it is often the first tool I turn to, to find that snippet of information. In some circumstances it can be the easiest fastest tool to use to find information. For example I started reading about the Australian indigenous fruit, the quandong (Santalum acuminatum), online. If you do a Google search for quandong, you get some 36,400 results. There is a lot of very useful and interesting information available. You can find out about the quandong industry, many definitions and scientific descriptions, descriptions of Aboriginal use of indigenous plants including the quandong, even recipes using the fruit. There are also lots of businesses with the word ‘Quandong’ in their name.

Books still do have their place as sources of information, though. A book like Wild food in Australia, by AB and JW Cribb (Collins, Sydney, 1974), provides historical information about the fruit: “These fruits seem to have been as popular with the Aborigines as they were with the white settlers. The Aborigines are reported even to have stored the dried flesh for future use, an unusual practice among those people.” (p.57)

The book, Punu. Yankunytjatjara plant use (C Goddard and A Kalotas, compilers; P Everard et al., contributors; Angus and Robertson, North Ryde, New South Wales, 1985) provides a lot of detailed, really interesting information, such as a detailed description of the plant and its fruit, and the fact that the quandong is called mangata in the Yankunytjatjara language.

“A medium-sized tree to about 5m tall with a dense, distinctive green canopy. Leaves somewhat thickened, opposite, tapering to a point; white to cream flowers borne in sprays on the end of branchlets; fruit when mature has a red skin, yellow flesh and a deeply pitted spherical stone [CW’s note: I have a quandong stone – the best description I can give is that it looks a little like a brain, with lots of ridges], with an oily kernel; a root parasite.” (p.32)

The Yankunytjatjara are an Australian Aboriginal people who live in central Australia, near the Everard Ranges. The quandong was (is) a very important food source for the people, as it grows abundantly and tastes good. The book also provides descriptions of traditional methods of preparation for the quandong and all the other plant foods the people used, in their language, with an English translation, so it has that added air of authenticity to it. For example:

Ka kutjupangku watjalpai “Wanyula mangataku yara!”

Someone would say, “Let’s go for quandongs!”

“Kungka tjuta, pakala! Kala mangataku yara!”

“Women, come on! Let’s go get some quandong!” (pp.33, 34)

(I was unable to display some of the letters used to depict Yankunytjatjara sounds properly; for example the letter n in the word punu in the title should actually be underlined, to signify a retroflex sound.)

The problem with information on the web is that it can sometimes be in many many different pages, so that you have to browse through a lot of websites to find your data. It doesn’t help that there can be so many dud pages as well! With a book, all the information is contained – just turn the pages. What I like most about using books to find information is the fact that you can read about the topic in a somewhat wider context. When you read about the quandong in a book about Australian plants, you can also get a lot of background and historical information, and read about a whole variety of other plants.

And then there is the pleasure of actually holding a book and turning its pages. Some things just seem to read better off the printed page.

So much scholarly information nowadays is published in electronic format, and as a librarian I find that most of my clients prefer to be able to get their information at their desktops. I like the convenience too, and I love being able to find the fulltext for an article or paper so quickly, on request. It was nice to be able to find so much information, and so many pictures of the quandong online. Linking to pictures and descriptions from other sites is also a useful feature of the web environment. Following up on references in a book is so much slower!

Still, I don’t know if we will be able to completely dispense with books for quite a while. So much of the knowledge and wisdom of humankind is still bound up in paper, and may never be digitised. I guess it is a matter of being aware of, and looking for, the best sources for the information you require, and using a combination of print and electronic material.

[Edit: 6:52am, I don’t think I have ever eaten a quandong before! Shall add this to the must-do list.]

Categories: quandong, information, books, WWW, Yankunytjatjara, Australia