Shirley Dixon - Bush tomatoes with flowers

Catalogue Number: 26/218

This painting tells the story of bush tomatoes, a desert food that grows wild across Central Australia. After a big rain, the dry country wakes up. Tiny flowers appear on the bush tomato plants, bringing colour back to the land. Soon after, small hard green fruits begin to grow. As the sun warms them, the fruits slowly turn yellow. This is when they are ripe and ready to eat.

If the fruit stays on the plant longer, it dries naturally in the sun and turns brown. These dried fruits are still good to eat. The yellow fruit has a sharp, tangy flavour, while the brown dried fruit tastes more earthy and slightly sweet. Families have enjoyed these different flavours for many generations.

The curved shapes in the painting show the women sitting together on the ground, they have their digging sticks beside them and an oval coolamon, a wooden bowl used in the old days for collecting bush foods.