TASTY 'MAGGOTS' -

Edmund Frederick DuCane was 22 years old when he arrived in Western Australia as a Lieutenant with the 20th Company of Sappers and Miners. The men were here to supervise convict building projects and DuCane was not initially impressed with 'dirt' being the 'prevailing feature of the colony'.

After a while his attitude softened somewhat and in one letter he wrote back to his parents;

“Another thing I did was to eat some beastly-looking thing they get out of dead blackboys – a large white maggot. It tastes beautiful, just like a nut, but very few white fellows eat them.”

Edmund had neglected to add that 'blackboys' are plants, not as his parents obviously thought, deceased Aborigines. He had quite some explaining to do to calm his shocked parents in his next letter home.....

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