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	LES HIDDINS…New tracks for the Bush Tucker Man
	It’s been quite a few years now since the last Bush Tucker Man show went to air. Les Hiddins, the affable Army Major who fronted the cameras for the show, has taken a different track. That track still means spending a fair bit of his time in the bush; he just doesn’t have a camera crew following his every move anymore. Asked if he missed it, he laughed. “We did three series of eight shows, plus a couple of one hour specials. That was enough. I reckon the whole bush tucker thing had run its course, there wasn’t much else to say. Anyway I was never a TV star.” It’s that last line that underlines the real Les Hiddins. He never saw himself as anything but a bloke who liked to amble around in the scrub, picking things up. There is a natural way about him that the camera loved. An encyclopaedic knowledge of bush foods just seemed to be something he absorbed with ease. “I like that word ‘tucker’,” he said at one stage. “It’s very Australian, and that’s a good thing.” He has always had a preference for the Northern part of Australia, seldom venturing south of the Tropic of Capricorn. “I call it the Les Line,” he quipped. Travelling with him can be interesting, for he seldom sees himself the way others do. Stopped for a coffee at Lakeland on the way north in Cape York, some folk at a nearby table whispered audibly, “That’s the Bush Tucker Man.” A little boy comes over and asks for an autograph, and Les obliges. “That little bloke would be too young to remember the series,” and the well-known grin appears. “Must be video or something.” That sums up the quality of the man. What you see, or rather saw, on the television is what you get in real life. The trademark hat is still there too, but it’s not the original, that’s in the National Museum in Canberra. “It might have had a couple of pups though.” As a young private soldier Les saw service in Vietnam. He did two tours of duty, the first as a forward scout, a tough job in the infantry. Years later and well into his 50’s, the effects of those years have taken their toll. “Just about everyone who went over there’s got some sort of a problem. In the second world war they called it shell shock.” The observation of widespread health problems among Vietnam veterans led him to come up with the idea of a veterans’ retreat. The place he chose was an old cattle station adjoining Lakefield National Park, called Kalpowar. “The bit we’re after is called the Green Ant block. It used to be a Soldier Settler block, so we reckon that’s appropriate.” The idea is for Australian veterans of all conflicts to be able to go and camp in the bush free of signs and regulations imposed by far away bureaucracies. Les and his mates have taken the fight all the way to Parliament House in Brisbane. The larrikin aspect of Les Hiddins enjoys the concept of making politicians uncomfortable. “CJ Dennis had a bloke called Ginger Mick in his stories, I reckon we’re a bit like him.” But the problem for the veterans, who have been accessing Kalpowar for the past three years, is that the property is owned by the Queensland Government, is subject to a Native Title claim, and has been earmarked for conservation purposes. According to Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson, the Vietnam veterans do not figure in the state government’s plans for the future use of Kalpowar. “My Department of Natural Resources and Mines is currently investigating a number of alternative parcels of land that may be more suitable for use by the veterans,” he says. The Department has approached eight shire councils in far north Queensland to identify suitable reserves, and a number of potential sites are being investigated. “When this process is completed I will put any suitable sites to Mr Hiddins for consideration by the veterans,” says Mr Robertson. In his camp on the banks of the Normanby River at Kalpowar, Les relaxes in a folding chair that looks like it dates back to the TV series. A light plane flies overhead. “That’s probably the Premier’s mob checking up on us,” he quips. But he’s quite serious about this project he calls Pandanus Park. The date was the 18th of August, 2003 - Vietnam Veterans Day. That morning a service was held on site, and Padre John Newman had consecrated a recently-built memorial obelisk. Les is hopeful that the Pandanus Park memorial service will become an annual event for Australian ex-servicemen. Many things have changed since the Bush Tucker Man series went to air. But there are a few things that have remained constant. The boyish irreverence remains, as does the basic good humour. The boy from the bush who became a private soldier and rose to the rank of major has come a long way, but he’s never forgotten where he came from. He dismisses a lot of his accomplishments in typical Hiddins-style, saying, “Just goes to show they’ll let anyone be an officer.” But those accomplishments should never be underestimated; before the show finished, he had become a household word in many parts of the world. He had also been a visiting fellow at the Durham University in England for a few months, and received an Order of Australia. There’s a wide range of books to his credit, including a series that introduces children to things about the Australian bush. The lazy smile and easy-going manner belie a formidable intellect. Les’s latest venture is a wine label. In partnership with Chain of Ponds Winery in South Australia, he has bought out a shiraz and a chardonnay, both blended to his requirements for a nice “quaffing” wine. Not surprisingly he’s named them after prominent Cape York explorer, Edmund Kennedy. The labels tell the story behind the naming of the wines, the Bloodwood Tree Shiraz and the Pudding Pan Hill Chardonnay. But for Les, the greatest pleasure is still pulling up beside some Top End river and chasing a barra. “Getting yourself a feed out in the bush is a lot of fun, especially when it involves fishing,” he reckons. He’s a bloke who likes his food fairly simple, but especially likes the idea of things like barramundi and mud crabs. “Every day’s a Sunday when you catch a barramundi,” he laughs. On a more serious note, Les has claimed that getting out in the bush and doing some fishing in the Cape is more therapeutic for many veterans than “all the pills and pensions in the world”. It is rather doubtful that Les Hiddins will shake off the Bush Tucker Man tag for some time to come. The books, videos and re-runs of the series will see to that. While travelling in Cape York, Les stops in a patch of scrub and points out three varieties of edible plants within the turning circle of his Land Rover. “The secret of bush tucker is being in the right place at the right time,” he says. “At another time you might go hungry. There’s also a lot of ‘rubbish tucker’ about.” Real bushmen are a bit thin on the ground these days, regardless of how much the term gets thrown around. In this bloke however, we’ve got the genuine article.
	Article courtesy of OUTBACK magazine February/March 2004 issue
	Story by John Denman, a veteran of the Malaysian Confrontation and the Project Pandanus Media Liaison Officer
	Photograph courtesy of Steve Strike
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