Yabbying in the hills: taking responsibility for consumption

When I was little, there was an annual tradition with my family’s church to head up to the Riverland over the Easter long weekend. Church members from across the country would descend in their thousands on an already denuded cattle property near Waikerie, pitching tents and parking caravans on every available patch of ground. Seething with kids from the suburbs, their parents exhausted from the four hour drive and the baking heat, the long weekend would turn that patch of ground beside the Murray into a dustbowl, with everything flammable set on fire and every surviving patch of empty ground turned into a sporting field.

One of the more contemplative activities for unsupervised youths was to go shrimping. We’d get a tin, bang some holes in the base, and a couple in the top to thread a wire handle through to make a contraption like a billy-can with holes in the bottom. We’d thread bait onto wire looped through the holes and then, attaching some string to the handle, it would be tethered to a fallen log or tree root in the shallows. Soap was our main bait, perhaps because of a lack of anything else, but a fish head would work wonders if we could get one.

Dedicated shrimpers could haul in dozens of freshwater shrimp - translucent little creatures about 5 centimetres long that would skitter around the inside of the tin – and if they were lucky, a yabby or two, which were larger, darker and had a pair of claws that were a real threat. I remember then that there was a real disconnect between catching and eating these creatures, which I think indicates a broader lack of realisation about where our food came from. While most of these suburban kids would go back to their tents that evening and tuck into sausages squeezed out of some distant slaughterhouse, I remember that when I once suggested that we could cook and eat one of the yabbies (rather than leave them in a bucket and forget about them), my suggestion was met first with disbelief, then revulsion, and my shrimping pals melted away.


In keeping with the broader theme of reconnection with the land and people that produce our food, as an omnivore, this local eating challenge also pushes me towards taking real responsibility for what I consume. With this in mind, Sophie and I set off on our journey of reconnecting with our food by yabbying. A friend has a dam that apparently seethes with them, and as the water level has declined over summer, the extent of their tunnelling into the dam walls has been revealed. Yabbies are notorious for digging through the clay layer that seals the dam in search of groundwater, with some yabbies having been found up to 7 metres underground.


We built three traps in the classic style, a container with holes in the base, a handle and a wire for bait threaded into the bottom: in this case, an olive oil tin, a yogurt container and half a plastic milk bottle. Our fourth trap was a five dollar “opera” net from an army disposals shop. For bait, we picked up a couple of fish heads from a seafood seller at the markets. We baited up the traps, tethered them to branches on the shore, tossed them into the murky water and waited. While Luka, the resident dog leaped in the water and tangled herself in the ropes, we sat in the warm sun and chatted about the ethics of eating meat.

Meat-eating is a contentious and deeply personal topic. I am horrified at the industrialisation of our food system and nowhere more than the atrocity of industrial livestock rearing and slaughter. While I’m revolted by the horrors of industrialised food, I’m not completely convinced that meat alone is the problem with attaining sustainability.

I think humans function best when they are nested within an ecosystem, which presents a challenge for us, as Judith Plant says,

“remembering and reclaiming the ways of our species where people and place are delicately interwoven in a web of life – human community finding its particular place within the living and dying that marks the interdependence of life in an integrated ecosystem”.

The best way for us to live with sensitivity and consciousness of the world that sustains us is to live in relationship with the organisms we share our home with. As indigenous cultures across the world suggest (and indigenous cultures may be the only working models of true sustainability we have) part of a relationship with the world might be the relationship of predator and prey. In this context, the act of hunting is not necessary one of domination and conquest, but can be an intricate and deeply respectful play of the cycles and exchange that define life within an ecosystem.

I’m a long way from reaching this kind of immersion in the life of the planet, but an important first step – both to test these grand theories as well as to confront the reality of eating meat – is take responsibility for my own consumption.


Every twenty minutes or so, we’d haul up the traps to find a handful of yabbies nibbling away at the bait, we’d throw back the little ones and carefully we’d pick up the big ones (holding them just on the crease behind their eyes and out of reach of their claws) and put them aside in an esky full of water in the shade. Yabbies colours can vary according to their habitat, and despite the murkiness of the dam, some emerged a deep, almost black, blue while others were tan, with shades of pale blue and patches of brilliant red. After a few hours, we had fifteen yabbies of good size, and had thrown back the same number again. The monster of the day was a dark-shelled giant, who opted to squeeze his full sixteen centimetre body into the halved milk bottle and wait, claws folded. Free roaming chickens watched curiously, from a safe distance.

HOW TO COOK YABBIES:
1. We loaded the eskies into the car, and wound our way back to the city, past cherry and apple orchards netted up against the birds.
2. When we were home, we placed them into containers and straight into the freezer, while putting on a pot to boil. At temperatures of under 16 degrees, yabby metabolism slows, gradually slipping into hibernation.
3. After 25 minutes in the freezer, they’re into the pot, boiled for a few minutes until they're completely red. They can be shelled and eaten immediately, or frozen for later eating.