DINKUM DINING
Chick on a stick
Mutton birds - a tasty dish credited with promoting good health, longevity and freedom from colds and other ailments
Story: Brian Kennedy and Bernie Slattery
Photos: Adrian Millman and Reg Ryan
The
best place to try mutton bird is in its natural habitat on the remote Hunter
Island group in Bass Strait off the tip of north-west Tasmania.
Here on these wind blown islands with their indescribable untouched beauty, you travel among spectacular sandbars and reefs in search of natural produce.
OUTBACK's "nomadic chef", Adrian Millman, says mutton bird deserves to be better known. Its official name is the short-tailed shearwater, a bird that flies incredible distances between the Artic and Tasmania each year. The misleading nickname "mutton bird" was originally applied to the species by early settlers. Perhaps a better name would be the Aboriginal word yolla.
Adrian says it has a unique taste that is certainly nothing like mutton. It can be best described as a blend between turkey, snake and rabbit, with a finish of a lovely sea oil taste.
It
is a classy bird, which is jam-packed with nutrients, and for sheer taste
and flavor it is worthy of the finest tables.
To reach Robbins Islands, residents have to wait for low tide to make
a potentially treacherous crossing over the mud and wheel-sucking sand. Mutton
bird processor Frank O'Reilley makes the trip regularly to the sandy western
beach of Robbins Island. He then progresses north for another channel crossing
to Walker Island, where he has been catching and processing mutton birds
since 1971. 
Full story: Issue 4, April-May 1999
