Sourcing local game meat is a tough task
Enter any tourist-orientated outback pub or restaurant and you'll hopefully be offered a spot of kangaroo, crocodile, emu or even camel.
It's exotic and lapped up by overseas visitors who can return home boasting they've tried true-blue Aussie game meat.
But the origins of these meats are never as readily advertised and many don't ask.
A representative from the Kununurra visitor centre says tourists wanting to try some Australian meat ask to be pointed towards a menu that includes kangaroo, crocodile or buffalo.
Some Broome restaurants offer a 'Kimberley tasting plate' which can include kangaroo, camel, pearl, crocodile and barramundi.
Three out of five of those meats are not from Broome or even from Western Australia.
You won't find kangaroo or camel that's from the state and you'd be lucky to get local crocodile, deer or emu; it's all brought in from the east.
Celebrity butcher and chef Vince Garreffa says the wild west flavour is getting harder to get hold of.
"The wild west type meats are exactly what the tourists are after these days, unfortunately they're not always available in the numbers we want," he said.
"Ever since we lost the local abattoir that used to look after those items we no longer get any local crocodile, no local kangaroo, very little emu and ostrich and we get a bit of local buffalo and that's really about it.
"Everything else seems to come from Queensland, the middle of Australia and the East Coast and it breaks my heart because not enough restaurants are able to use it because it is harder to get and a little bit expensive."
Mr Garreffa blames globalisation.
"The big players in Australia, the leading supermarkets who tend to have a monopoly, stopped dealing with the local crew," he said.
"And, because they took their business to the eastern states and bought their meat the local people suffered and closed down so questions need to be asked."
Local crocodile
Valerie Douglas, widow of adventurer Malcolm who died in 2010, has taken over the family crocodile and wilderness park, 16 kilometres north of Broome.
She remembers the days she used to harvest and sell crocodile meat.
"Every year we would do a harvest and produce very nice meat and beautiful skins," she said.
"An average of 1,000 crocodiles and ten kilos per croc, it was mainly to the local market.
"We thought this is great, the meat pays for running the abattoir and skinning the crocodiles but then when the price dropped, it wasn't worth keeping the meat, or producing the meat so we just skin now.
"At the moment because of our dollar we can't sell our skins overseas and it's not profitable. "
Mrs Douglas says she would like to start supplying croc meat one day when the costs are more in her favour.
"It's always something we keep in mind and we still have the infrastructure, we still have our abattoir and our single pens," she said.
"Crocodiles are very expensive to produce because up here in the north we have to source meat for them and the freight costs of getting chicken frames and chicken heads up from Perth, it costs us in total $2 a kilo, which makes it a very expensive operation.
"It would be really lovely to be able to say this crocodile is sourced WA and we produced it here but that won't happen for a while."
Game meat supply
John Philp is one of the managers at Mahogany Creek which distributes game meat to hotels, restaurants and cafes throughout WA.
"Supply is obviously a huge problem," he said.
"Those sort of products were exportable, they went all 'round the country and now WA has just fallen to the bad side of that."
He has watched industries come and go, and says other states do well with some game meats.
"The kangaroo and crocodile industry is going strong, kangaroo for human consumption comes from Queensland, Victoria and South Australia," he said.
"There is a lot in the pet food industry being done in WA so they're still shooting roos here in WA but not for human consumption, it's all going to the pet industry."
Mr Philp says there have been problems with camel meat which comes from the Northern Territory and South Australia.
"When they found out some toxin in the [camel] meat was killing dogs, the pet food industry stopped killing camels totally, hence that ended the small amount that used to come through for human consumption," he said.
"Emu has to come from Victoria, there's no abattoir in WA that kills emu; most of the money's not in the meat, it's in the oil.
"There's only one farmer left in WA and he's ready to give up, we had 20 farms here years ago and now we've got one.
"And, buffalo comes mostly from the NT, but some comes from QLD and SA, pretty much all the abattoirs that were doing it physically have all shut down.
"Crocodile meat comes either from Queensland or the Northern Territory. "
Future
The WA Meat Industry Authority's CEO, Renata Paliskis, says it's true WA gets most of its game meat from the east.
"20 years ago there were a small number of establishments that were processing the likes of emu and buffalo but these days that has gone by the by," she said.
"There is an establishment in the South West that does still process deer on a regular basis but that is on a service kill basis only."
Ms Paliskis says it's a supply and demand situation.
"The numbers in the first instance weren't significant anyway and I think they were being processed in order to service quite a small niche market and it could be that the profitability of supplying that market just faded," she said.
Mr Garreffa says it's a shame there is not more WA produce on offer.
"We all talk about local but its not local anymore is it?" he stated.
"The tourists would like to think that they're having something local but at least they're trying the product.
He says it's an industry which could be developed.
"The tourists aren't missing out but the people who are missing out is the locals because the profits should be happening here, not just at the business end, and we're helping the businesses in the eastern states by supplying," he said.
"It's such a waste that people would rather cull things with a helicopter from the air and leave them to rot on the ground than come up with solutions not to waste these very valuable resources."
Valerie Douglas agrees.
"When you come to a particular state or country you want an experience that's indigenous and that doesn't happen when the products you're buying are imported or come from another state," she said.
Meanwhile, John Philp is working on making emu, camel, crocodile and buffalo more palatable to the masses.
"You could go to 30 restaurants and probably struggle to find two of them with any Australiana type product on their menu," he said.
"We should have our product on the menu, it's more from an inventiveness from chefs.
"We spend a lot of our time trying to get them to try these products to put it on their menu."
Mr Philp says kangaroo has become pretty mainstream but not other local game meat.
"We have several hotels and restaurants that have got [kangaroo] full time on their menu but most of the time it's sporadic.
"They might say this menu run we'll have a bit of emu, this menu run we'll try kangaroo; we're trying our hardest for it to become full time mainstream.
"That's one of the hardest things, changing that psyche."
Source: ABC News, 3 April 2013
