Australian Bushcraft

tain a parasite which can invade the human liver. The Aborigines ate them after first roasting them in their shells.

They can also be made into a tasty soup. If extracting the meat for soup making either throw them into a pot of boiling water or pour boiling water over them to kill them and force the shells open. They are very difficult (if not impossible) to open when alive, especially the larger specimens.

The presence of freshwater mussels in a stream or watercourse is usually indicated by open or broken shells lying along the bank. They can be harvested by walking along the creek bed and feeling for them with the toes. The mussels stand upright in the beds of creeks. Once discovered, they can be easily pulled out of the mud or sand.

Saltwater mussels usually attach themselves to rocks or pieces of wood. Exposed at low tide they are easily harvested.

The once-despised pipi is found along sandy surf beaches and is harvested at low tide by the barefoot toe probing method. Although somewhat sandy it can be steamed or made into a soup. One suspects there are more futile methods of removing sand from pipis than there are pipis.

One method suggests they should be rinsed in several changes of fresh water over a period of about four hours, a second relies on soaking in seawater for twenty-four hours and a third insists that they should be soaked in a mixture of half seawater, half freshwater, plus a cup of oatmeal.

Whatever method is used, these shellfish are far less sandy if after soaking the gut sack is removed from the edible foot.

This is tedious but worth it.

Among the other known shellfish, whelks can be found in rock pools, hidden among kelp and seaweed. Their flesh is extremely tough and unless finely minced almost unchewable. But they can be made into a soup, first by smashing the shell and removing the edible flesh, boiling it and straining off the liquid, which should be thickened. In a survival situation milk and butter would not be available. However, under more civilised conditions this is a vast improvement.

Other shellfish include clams and abalone. It is illegal to take clams in tropical Barrier Reef waters, although Asian