Where to Uncover the World's Tastiest Smoked Eel

When the black wattle blooms, Gunditjmara man Braydon Saunders knows that the kooyang (short-finned eel) are about to begin their run. In a desperate bid to spawn, the snakelike fish will make the journey of their lifetime along the rivers and creeks of Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, a patchwork of wetlands on Gunditjmara Country in southwest Victoria, all the way out to the Coral Sea. Incredibly, this vital information has been passed down from generation to generation since his people first started trapping and harvesting kooyang at least 6,600 years ago; a tradition almost as ancient as the eels.

One of the world’s oldest and most extensive aquaculture systems, Budj Bim’s volcanic lava flows — a souvenir from the last violent eruption — form the foundation of the network, which the Gunditjmara painstakingly carved into channels and weirs. There are also holding ponds, which Saunders describes as makeshift “refrigerators.” Here, kooyang are kept alive while they instinctively gorge themselves to save energy for an arduous migration that some will never make (sorry, little guys). Eventually, they’re harvested with funnel-shaped, hand-woven baskets. 

“They eat so much that their skin stretches and the fat starts to show on the outside,” says Saunders, who has worked as a Budj Bim guide and ranger. “You get a ton of calories and healthy fats from eating kooyang, but it used to take a long time to smoke and prepare, so it was treated as a delicacy.”

Today, travelers can enjoy a glimpse — and taste — of the Gunditjmara’s culinary heritage by visiting Budj Bim, which recently became the first site in Australia added to the UNESCO World Heritage list purely for its cultural importance to the First Nations. In addition to touring lava flows and eel traps with an Indigenous Australian guide, visitors to the onsite Tae Rak Aquaculture Center have the opportunity to savor kooyang prepared by a local Gunditjmara chef. 

During my visit, I order the generous tasting plate in a moment of hunger-fueled ambition, which includes kooyang cooked four ways: smoked, fried into crispy chips, stuffed into arancini balls, and whipped into a pâté. My favorite‚ the creamy pâté, reminds me of a meaty baba ganoush and suits the oily richness of the eel perfectly. Its pungent umami flavor puts unagi everywhere to shame.

For many Gunditjmara and other First Nations people, sharing their cuisine firsthand at places like Budj Bim is a valuable chance to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians closer together through storytelling. Indigenous chef Zach Green, owner of Iluka's Hospitality in Port Hedland, calls this process “reconciliation on a plate.”

“Food is a universal language,” says Green. “I'm passing on what my elders taught me, so people get an authentic experience, rather than just something to eat. I think it's amazing what my mob are doing down in Gunditjmara country. Our culture is not a marketing tool or a token gesture. You can’t just say, ‘Look, we're using this ingredient and that ingredient’ without telling the story. It's about celebrating culture and learning more about our culture through food.”

While their ancestors smoked kooyang in the hollows of massive trees with fragrant cherry ballart leaves for added flavor, the Gunditjmara have come up with a host of new ways to make kooyang really, really delicious. Green favors a light pan fry or eel curry, while Saunders recommends a modern approach to the classic preparation:

“We don't have to worry about a smoking tree. Just chuck the eel straight on a fire, cover it in coals, wait 30 or 40 minutes, and you’re good to go.”

Saunders remembers a time when those meals were more plentiful. As a young man, he would go out eeling with little more than a flashlight and spear around 40 times a year. Today, while Budj Bim remains an active aquaculture site, the Gunditjmara worry about eel numbers, which have declined worldwide, potentially due to factors such as habitat loss, pollution, and climate change. In response, the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation (GMTOAC) — a nonprofit that represents the Gunditjmara — established a long-term kooyang monitoring program in partnership with the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research to better understand the Budj Bim eel populations and determine what protections, if any, are needed.

There are also fewer working eel traps these days, says Saunders, and only a couple uncles still keep kooyang in holding ponds. The return of the Lake Condah area to the Gunditjmara people by the state of Victoria in 2008 was a powerful step. But now, GMTOAC must continue to buy surrounding farmland which they were forced off during the 1850s. Assuming these traps were drained, they will need to be dredged, cleaned, and restored — which can be a contentious issue.

Since it's protected by Victoria’s Aboriginal Heritage Act and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, some Gunditjmara see Budj Bim as a historic place full of monuments that should remain untouched to avoid any potential damage. Others — Saunders included — argue that Budj Bim is a living, functioning ecosystem.

“These fish traps are supposed to be working today,” he says. “They can be working today, and it's going to have no effect on the fish traps because they've been there for thousands of years. They call us the oldest continuing culture and then write legislation that stops us from continuing our culture. What’s the point if we’re not allowed to use it the way it was meant to be used?”