Rayleen Brown
Founder & Owner
Rayleen Brown’s story is one of humble beginnings, hard work, and passion. Born in Darwin, she traveled up and down the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory with her parents and siblings, following the work. From Wave Hill to Adelaide River, from Pine Creek to Humpty Doo—she was learning all the while.
As a teenager working at the Central Land Council, Rayleen became involved in land rights through activism and by providing administrative support to anthropologists while recording genealogies for Land Claims. Rayleen's passion for preserving knowledge and maintaining a connection to the country grew during this time.
Her passion for cooking and food came from both her mother and father, who were both excellent cooks. Growing up in Rayleen was always helping her mother cook for her five siblings or preparing meals for the local footy club—there was always a big feed to make. Her father was also a great cook, and his marinades for satays were heavenly. Fortunately, her father handwrote all his recipes to pass down to his kin.
Rayleen and Gina’s first catering job were for 100 Warlpiri women at a large meeting in Laramba to support Indigenous teachers. Rayleen and Gina Smith, the co-founders, cooked 300 meals a day out of a domestic kitchen. After the successful meeting, the women thanked the two cooks for their delicious food and suggested they start a cooking business. That’s when the seed was planted, and the journey to create Kungkas Can Cook began. Their first professional job was catering for 1,000 performers at the Yeperenye Festival. They didn’t even own a knife, fork, or plates to serve the food on. That was 24 years ago. Since then, Kungkas Can Cook has diversified into tourism and bush food products, offering locals and tourists alike the opportunity to experience the wonderful flavors of bush food from the desert.
“I hope I leave a legacy for the younger generation, my own family and my extended family, to be proud of who we are and our culture, to have knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, living through our grandmothers story. ”
Rayleen Brown and Kungkas Can Cook are known throughout Australia and many parts of the world where Central Australian bush foods are increasingly receiving due recognition as unique, speciality, gourmet and delicious. Rayleen has contributed and shared her unique recipes in publications such as the Great Australian Cookbook (now a tv program on the SBS Food Network) and an ABC publication Australia Cooks, and just recently filming with the BBC Great Rail Journeys of the World highlighting the journey of the Ghan Adelaide to Alice Springs. Her most proud moment was being selected as a guest judge for Masterchef Australia which was filmed onsite in Central Australia.
Rayleen’s insistence on using only wild harvest bush tucker sourced directly from the women who gather the food, as a way to support livelihoods and the continuation of connection to story and country, is well known and respected. Rayleen has also contributed to much research in her region around the growth and development of bush foods and their potential. Rayleen is continuing to help raise the profile of bush foods, opportunities for people on country using bush foods and wants better protection for the ecological knowledge rights of people to the food that has sustained their communities for thousands of years. Rayleen is also lobbying for ethical trade frameworks within the bush foods industry in Australia.
Kungkas Can Cook is a family business, and the kitchen is always bustling with activity. The ten grandkids, known as "the grannies," along with Rayleen's three daughters and two sons, have all worked in the kitchen at some point, including doing work experience for school. Rayleen often takes "the grannies" out on country for picnics in the bush, where they learn from their grandma, helping them connect with the land more than with screens. This is to help the grandkids focus on what truly matters—family. Rayleen hopes that the grannies will build a strong connection with the bush, becoming familiar with it, and spending their spare time camping, fishing, and hunting.