Warm weather and a flurry of marine activity made Birak a season for the coast.
Feature by: Carolyn Beasley
With warm sunshine you can depend upon, the Noongar season of Birak in Perth (Boorloo) was traditionally a time for feasting on seafood. The season, usually coinciding with December and January, was known as ‘first summer’ and follows the final spring rains of Kambarang. With fattened crabs, fire-roasted fish and nutritious coastal herbs, Birak was a time a plenty.
Dale Tilbrook, a Wardandi Bibbulmun Noongar woman, is the owner of bush foods and cultural tourism company Dale Tilbrook Experiences in the Swan Valley.
Dale Tilbrook from Dale Tilbrook Experiences
“Birak is traditionally the time of the year when all the Noongar groups would make their way to their seaside locations,” Dale explains. “Every group would have areas where they would go. From the beaches around Fremantle (Walyalup) and Mandurah (Mandjoogoordap), to around the Bunbury and Albany (Kinjarling) areas, everybody would be going to the seaside. They'd be heading there along time-honoured paths.”
Dale says the reason for the movement centred around abundant food.
“The same reasons that people go to Mandurah at Christmas time, those are the reasons we went to the sea in Birak,” she says. “All the fish and the prawns and the crabs are running!”
During Birak, inlets like Mandurah’s Peel Harvey Estuary and Perth’s Swan River (Derbarl Yerrigan) are heaving with life, like blue-swimmer crabs, prawns, and fish such as yellow-finned whiting, flathead, bream, tailor, and herring.
Mandurah (Mandjoogoordap) coastline
While these species are still popular today, capture methods in the old days were a little different. While small morsels like prawns would be caught in naturally woven nets, catching bigger species involved stone fish traps built across sections of an estuary.
“We'd build these little stone walls coming in from each side, leaving a gap in the middle,” Dale says. “When the tide came in, we'd fill in the gap with brush and branches. When the tide went out, the water and all the little critters could escape, but the bigger fish would be caught up in the pools.”
As the family gathered around, it was then a simple matter of the cooking.
“We would just be basically putting them on to the hot coals and wait for them to change colour,” Dale says.
Vibrant coastal plants were also on hand to supplement the seafoods, providing essential nutrients.
“In Birak, there'll be all the beach herbs around,” Dale says. “Things like the native spinach, sea parsley, and samphire.” In some areas, the plant called Geraldton wax was used as a flavouring for fish. “It would be wrapped up in wet paperbark and cooked in the ashes.”
Selection of native bush foods from Dale Tilbrook Experiences
Beyond the seafood delicacies, the bush in Birak provided other tasty snacks.
“A lot of the Acacia species, particularly the jam wattle and the manna wattle would have their gum exuding from the trunk, and this would be snapped off and eaten,” Dale says. “Some people say it’s slightly sweet, and some people call it Noongar toffee. It is chewy, it does tend to stick to your teeth.”
Dale notes that Birak saw other uses for the versatile wattle plants.
“The pods are ripening, and the seeds are available for harvest,” she explains. “We'd be roasting it in the hot ash by the fire, and then cleaning it and grinding it. We mix that flour with water, and either eat the paste, or bake them into the little flat bread cakes.”
These days, Dale’s tourism experiences operate under the shade of towering gum trees on the banks of the Swan River at Mandoon Estate. Dale guides guests through tastes of traditional bush tucker foods, and during Birak, the experience will always include wattle seeds that she has purchased from Aboriginal harvesters.
“We use wattles like Acacia saligna (orange wattle), Acacia microbotrya (manna wattle), and Acacia cyclops (red-eyed wattle),” she says. “They're ones that grow around Perth.”
In the old days the wattle seeds would be parched in hot ash.
“But these days we use the coffee roaster!” Dale laughs.
As for fruits, the quandong, or native peach, is just finishing its fruiting in Birak, although Dale’s guests can try these delicacies all year, fresh from her freezer.
Other seasonal tastes come with a reminder of Birak’s seaside lifestyle, with beach herbs featuring. Additional native herbs and spices are offered year-round.
“These are things that are easily accessible when people want to add something yummy to their cooking,” Dale says. “We might have something like dried and fresh saltbush, and we'll pick some fresh native rosemary.”
Birak has always been a time of plenty, and as the days grow warmer, modern-day visitors can dive into Perth’s season of seaside indulgence.
City Beach
Published November 2025