The taciturn beasts have also locally wiped out tasty plants such as the quandong, a delicious fruit in the sandalwood family.

A male southern cassowary feeds on quandongs, a type of fruit, in Queensland, Australia.

One of them, Kylie Kwong, is passionately committed to using indigenous ingredients in her Chinese restaurant, Billy Kwong: warrigal greens, saltbush, sea parsley and quandongs or desert peaches all appear on her menu.

Another fruit of fraudulent type growing on the plains is the quandong.

We saw two or three dozen grass-trees to-day, also some quandong and currajong trees, and camped again in scrubs where there was only a few leguminous bushes for the camels to eat.