The GULP community group engages in projects that aim to connect community through the sharing of local plant knowledge in growing, cooking and use of exotic tropical and native plants in the Darwin region.
This reduces food miles, connects people to place, promotes healthy eating and allows people to share their knowledge cross culturally within the community online and face to face.
The project works with many other community organisations in Darwin including community gardens, arts groups, school kitchen gardens, multicultural groups, market stall holders, backyard growers and interested individuals.
GULP NT was established in 2011 and has hosted many community events, workshops, local food festivals and provided education materials to a wide audience living in the Top End.
City of Darwin’s support has already allowed us to create a local food directory for the Darwin region and host bush tucker walks.
In 2020 we have also hosted “The Top End Local food Challenge” and we are working on making short movies about growing food in urban spaces and a harvest calendar.
We aim to include anyone new to Darwin, the Tropics and its produce as well as those already passionate and knowledgeable. Connections to food through community are essential due to the remote location of Darwin and its reliance on trucked in food supplies. Creating community is important in a vibrant, multicultural city.
HISTORY OF GULP
GULP NT (Growing and Using Local Produce) was the outcome of a group of local Darwin residents wanting to encourage the Darwin community to embrace local Tropical produce through community events and workshops and networking people and places together.
The “GULP” project formalised these get togethers and threw them open to the wider community hosting workshops and food shares in public spaces in association with other community groups. Thanks to funding in 2013 and 2014 from The Community Benefit fund (Department of business NT Government) and City of Darwin Environment grants we were able to host workshops free of charge for anyone to attend in the wider Darwin community.
So far workshop and ingredient topics have included- cooking okra, wet season greens, preparing coconuts to make coconut milk and oil, growing Asian wet season beans and crops and cooking cassava roots into sweet and savoury dishes, multicultural uses of Banana, bitter melon and taro, eggplant dishes and more recently the use of native bush tucker.
