#nardoo

aka ‘Water Clover’

 A remarkably dense growth of Nardoo around the old railway dam near Cue - our host had never seen so much of it there before. 

Marsilea is a genus of approximately 65 species of aquatic fern, named after  Italian naturalist Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1656–1730). They hardly resemble ferns at all, The long-stalked leaves have four clover-like lobes and are either held above water or submerged.

The sporocarps of some Australian species are very drought-resistant, surviving up to a century in dry conditions. When wet, the gelatinous interior of the sporocarp swells, splitting it and releasing a worm-like mass that carries sori, eventually leading to germination of spores and fertilization.

Some species are edible - the leaves of Marsilea crenata are part of the East Javanese cuisine of Indonesia, and called Pecel Semanggi. It’s served with spicy peanut and sweet potato sauce. In Australia, the sporocarps of species including Marsilea drummondii are eaten by Aborigines and early white settlers. However, the sporocarps contain an enzyme which destroys thiamine (vitamin B1), leading to brain damage in sheep and horses. During floods in the Gwydir River basin 2,200 sheep died after eating nardoo. Three-quarters of the sheep that were affected did however respond to thiamine injections.Thiamine deficiency from incorrectly prepared nardoo likely resulted in the starvation and death of Burke and Wills.

They also make interesting aquarium plants.

Our pond is so close to being finished.

Here's Lon starting to fill it.

While it's not in the perfect place (it's too big but was a gift), it will be a buffer and overflow for the aquaponics (next project) as well as a place to breed shrimp and some of the more rampantly growing water plants such as Brahmi, Nardoo and Gotu Kola.

On a recent visit to mum’s house she gave each of us two bottles of white wine. Mathry and my step dad are moving/have just moved to SA and obviously they can’t take everything with them. Still, it seems this particular giveaway was motivated less by altruistic motherliness than by what must have been a sentiment akin to ‘get this trash wine out of here’. 

So we’ve all been given some wine. And let me tell you, it is so bad that even I don’t want to drink it. I mean, obviously I will drink it. But you best believe I won’t enjoy it. These bottles of wine were given to Mathry by a friend in exchange for a mattress (nothing sus) and I believe there was some kind of understanding that the wine was meant to be drinkable, enjoyable, etc. 

The wine in question is the 2007 Granite Hills Nardoo Chardonnay. You can see the bottle below, lovingly posed on the floor next to my laptop charger.

Never before in my life have I looked at reviews of wine (beyond picking out a bottle with shiny foil stickers from the discount bin). I did google this bottle though because I was curious about how badly Mathry got jacked. So Nardoo has one rating on the site wine-searcher dot com and that review is from an old white dude (who else would review wine?) named James Halliday. It transpires that Halliday is vaguely famous or... I guess you might bill him as a noted wine critic. He rated Nardoo 90/100. Which seems like madness until you look at his scoring system which is basically weak as fuck:

94–100 – Outstanding

90–93 – Highly recommended

87–89 – Recommended

84–86 – Fair to good

80–83 – An everyday wine

75–79 – Deficient

His stats on wine-searcher dot com are as follows:

Score range: 65 – 98 points

50% fall between: 88 – 93 points

Average score: 90.1 points

So what that tells us is that ol’ Halliday highly recommends all wine. Sure thing, champ. As if anyone takes his opinion seriously after he seared off his taste buds with a thousand bottles of Nardoo. 

The bottle deliberately omits any comments about flavour or tastes one might find in the wine because legally the only thing they are allowed to say about it is: “burns real bad.” This is what the bottle does say: “The Nardoo is a rare aquatic fern that thrives after seasonal rain. It is found inland in all States of Australia. The Nardoo pods were an important food source for our indigenous ancestors and explorers Burke & Wills during their travels in 1861.” 

Let’s do some Wikipedia-based fact checking:

Nardoo is the indigenous word for a type of aquatic fern which is indeed edible (with a few caveats-- more on that in the next paragraph). Although apparently not for sheep: during a flood over 2000 sheep died when they ate nardoo :(

The label’s assertion that nardoo was an “important food source” for Burke and Wills is kind of untrue. Wikipedia suggests that Burke and Wills died from a vitamin B deficiency which was the direct result of eating too much incorrectly prepared nardoo. Wikipedia’s sources on that seem a bit sketchy though: the first reference links (I kid you not) to a professional cleaning business. The second link is actually very interesting (it’s from the State Library of Victoria) and talks a lot about how if you don’t prepare nardoo the right way it has dangerous levels of thiaminase which destroys all the vitamin B in your body which can lead to beriberi and then... xxxDEATHxxx. The Yandruwandha know/knew how to prepare nardoo spores into a flour which was then mixed with water to make a dough which, depending on what people felt like eating, was either cooked in ashes or made into a type of porridge by adding more water. Something about that preparation process removes the thiaminase. The article concludes that “[b]ecause Burke and Wills were so exhausted, emaciated and most likely suffering from scurvy, the onset of beri-beri would have accelerated their deaths, but was probably not the sole cause for their demise. Additional factors such as malnourishment from a lack of calories provided by the nardoo they consumed combined with hypothermia, which is [a] significant factor but has previously been overlooked, would also have played a significant role in their deaths.”

From what I read Burke sounds like a real jerk. Basically while they were on the expedition Burke, Wills and King (an Irish soldier) encountered the Yandruwandha people quite a bit. That’s obviously where they learned about eating nardoo. The Yandruwandha people were happy to help Burke & co. but Burke turned them down because he didn’t want to trade/give them anything in exchange for their help. That guy King survived somehow so after Burke and Wills (who was only 27) had died he found the Yandruwandha and lived with them for like a month before a rescue party picked him up and took him back to Melbourne. They were happy for him to hang out with them because he contributed and helped out by shooting birds for everyone to eat

This is vaguely irrelevant but also kind of nice (from Wikipedia): “Breastplates were issued to Aboriginal people between 1815 and 1946 for faithful service, for saving the lives of non-Indigenous people... [o]n this trip to exhume Burke and Wills' remains, Howitt presented three breastplates commissioned by the Victorian Exploration Committee to the Yandruwandha people in appreciation of the assistance they had given to Burke, Wills and King... The inscription on the plate states that it was presented "for the Humanity shewn to the Explorers Burke, Wills and King 1861".” 

Anyway, if I were to give this 2007 bottle of Nardoo Chardonnay some advice, I’d say it might be a good idea to be careful about going around running your mouth about how nardoo is delicious and edible and that Burke & Wills loved it so much they served it at their secret same-sex wedding and received many gracious compliments on the way they had prepared it, etc. because unless one goes to the effort of taking their research beyond the realm of Wikipedia one might easily poison oneself by greedily eating too many delicious fern spores.

Artist: Travi$ Scott Title: Days Before Rodeo Year of Release: 2014 Acquire it here Favourite track: “Drugs You Should Try”, “Backyard” Comments section sample:

What’s so good about this thing? His 2013 tape Owl Pharoah actually was very weird and nice. Plus, he’s been endorsed by Kanye (which might not mean much considering Ye’s favourite dude is that shit dick Big Sean but whatever). Scott was initially brought into Very GOOD Beats, which is GOOD Music’s production wing, but obviously raps pretty well too. His mixtapes have actually been released by Grand Hustle, T.I.’s label. Scott’s only 22 so I guess you can excuse some of the more boring raps and lyrical stuff. Maybe this is a dumb opinion to have, but I often think pure charisma is more important than harping on about some fake deep shit (hey LUPE) anyway. Like for example, Snoop sounds really fucking cool just spelling out his own name. In any case, Scott’s beats are usually fairly interesting-- so there should be enough to hold your attention.