Major Les Hiddins AM, aka The Bush Tucker Man retracing the steps of Christie Palmerston’s 1886 expeditions adventures up the Russell River.
In this instalment of the Remote Journal we pay tribute to Major Les Hiddins (AM), also known as The Bush Tucker Man.
There's a particular generation of Australians who can't walk past a green plum tree, a boab or a stand of pandanus without hearing a voice in their head: "Have a look at this."
That voice belongs to Major Les Hiddins (AM), The Bush Tucker Man, who turns 80 next week. Like Malcolm Douglas, whom we've honoured in these pages before, Les belongs to that rare breed of Australians who travelled through the remote Country of this continent, listened to it, learned from its First Peoples, and brought what he learned back to living rooms across Australia.
Where it all started.
Leslie James Hiddins was born in Brisbane in August 1946 and spent his early years between Cairns and Brisbane. He joined the Australian Army as a private soldier in the infantry, and between 1966 and 1968 served two tours in Vietnam, his first as a forward scout, out in front of the patrol, reading the ground.
It was there that the seed of his life's work was planted. On one long-range patrol that kept getting extended because of constant contact with the enemy, his unit couldn't risk a resupply drop giving away their position. So they stretched their ration packs further and further. Somewhere in that hunger, a young Les Hiddins found himself wondering: wouldn't it be handy to know what you could eat out here?
After Vietnam, he was commissioned and transferred to Army Aviation, flying Kiowa helicopters across northern Australia and Arnhem Land. Tracking over 200 kilometres of vast empty mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, in one of the most remote areas in the world, the question became more personal: if he had to put the chopper down out there, how would he get on?
Learning from the Oldest Survival Experts on Earth
The Army eventually tasked Hiddins with cataloguing the edible plants of far north Queensland, and he went in as a student, taught by people who had held this knowledge for tens of thousands of years.
Working alongside Aboriginal communities across northern Australia, through Arnhem Land, Cape York, the Gulf Country and the Kimberley, Les was, by his own telling, always the student. At the time, only Aboriginal people and a small handful of others had recorded the bush foods in use across these communities. Elders introduced him to foods like the Kakadu plum, used for millennia and now recognised as one of the richest natural sources of vitamin C on the planet. On screen, his respect for the people who taught him beamed through and the episodes went on to captivate Australians and viewers all over the world.
He was awarded a Defence Fellowship to formally research survival in Australia's north, and became the principal author of the Australian Army's combat survival manual. One of his brilliant contributions was the "snack map", topographic maps with bush food and survival information printed on the reverse, so a downed airman or lost soldier carried a guide to Country in the same pocket as their map. In 1987 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his service in combat survival.
Gear that needed to hold up to the harsh conditions of the Australian outdoors.
In 1988, the ABC turned Les's research into television, and Bush Tucker Man became an institution. Three series ran through to 1996, and the format never changed: one man, one battered Land Rover Perentie, a khaki drill shirt, a swag, canvas tarps and half a continent of Country to read.
For a brand like ours, obsessed with gear that earns its keep, Les's kit is a masterclass in the philosophy we build by. Nothing he carried was chosen for how it looked. The Perentie, the Army's Australian-built Land Rover, hauled a trailer through Cape York bog holes and river crossings, and helped keep him alive. His home on the road was famously nothing more than a simple roll of blankets under the stars. His canvas Army backpack went up rock faces and along beaches, because when Les reached the end of the track he kept going on foot, often driving two or three days to a basecamp, then walking the Country properly from there. And the hat: a standard-issue slouch hat, brim snapped up on both sides into that unmistakable silhouette, worn in every single frame of the series.
This was gear built to last, repaired and kept in service. It was chosen for the job, and it outlasted the show itself, with his original Land Rover now sitting in the Darwin Military Museum, while his hat, camera and backpack live in the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. When your kit ends up in the national collection, it's fair to say it was built to outlast you.
Service That Never Stopped
Les retired from the Regular Army in 1989 with the rank of Major, but kept serving with the Army Reserve until 2001, continuing his work with Indigenous communities across the north. Then he turned his energy to his fellow veterans.
In 2001 he led the establishment of Pandanus Park, a bush retreat for war veterans on the banks of the Normanby River in Cape York, on Kalpowar Country adjoining what is now Rinyirru National Park. A remote place with no amenities and no fuss; just Country, quiet and the company of people who understood. When Kalpowar was returned to Aboriginal title in 2005, the veterans secured a long lease from the Traditional Owners, a fitting arrangement for a man whose whole career had been built on Aboriginal generosity of knowledge.
The recognition kept coming. In 2008, James Cook University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Science. In 2017, at seventy, he was back in the field teaching bush survival to Australian soldiers and US Marines on Exercise Kowari. In 2019 he launched a searchable digital database of his life's bush tucker research at bushtuckerman.com.au, decades of notes, rephotographed and made available to anyone who wants to learn. And on Instagram, he and his wife Sandy share photos from the archive with a whole new generation of fans, including teachers in remote Arnhem Land communities using his work in their classrooms.
He never really retired. As he's said himself, there's always a little something going on.
Happy Birthday Les, you legend!