Samantha Martin's passion for honouring her Jaru ancestors started while "growing up in the outback, deep in the bush" in the East Kimberley region.

The woman behind three editions of the Bush Tukka guides and continuous appearances on SBS Food grew up in a tiny community where almost half of Doon Doon station's accounted 50 residents lived in one basic family home - that included foster children and a blind uncle.

They grew up in a basic, three-bedroom household, with a concrete floor and corrugated iron roof whose features were cold running water and electricity "most of the time".

She remembers it was a struggle to feed everyone, but says it was beautiful way to grow up together and that mum, Nancy, was always prepared – as is her mob's way – to offer visitors passing through shelter for the night and food from what the family would catch.

"That, to us, was just our way of life," Ms Martin told National Indigenous Times.

"There were no surprises – we'd go on Country, we'd eat what we catch.

"It was all about honouring the food that we caught and sharing what we caught.

"That's what I truly remember: my family honouring Country and what Country supplied for us and then learning from my mother, and my sisters and my aunties, about the seasonal changes and how to identify food that's in season was also teaching a sense in me to who I was."

Nancy was illiterate; but Samantha can recall her mum could read the land like a tracker and her ability to find where bush tukka was would prove invaluable.

Ms Martin would grow up and move away from the Doon Doon stopover, and move to flashy cities, but that knowledge would feed a remarkable career.

"As a young girl, I realised this knowledge was very useful and they weren't telling me this sort of stuff for the sake of just talking," she says.

"They were telling me so I would learn their practices, and then one day pass it on, if I had children.

"But then through passing it on became my passion of wanting to preserve the knowledge and that to me was how do I do that so it can be honoured on such a grand scale."

That came in the form of books first, but not before Samantha had to learn how to effectively read first herself.

She was too busy fishing the local river for barramundi and bream at every chance to focus in a classroom.

Despite mum's inability to either read or write, Nancy valued an education and was aware of her daughter struggling to overcome the same shortcomings.

"I will tell you a secret: I did not know how to read until I was in year 12," Ms Martin said.

"I went to a prestigious school in Perth for four years and I didn't know how to read until half way through my last year and I figured out to put a sentence together.

"I was reading like a three-year-old kid, basically.

"Then I picked up my first book and I read it from front to back and I realised how amazing great books were and that's when I wanted to become an author."

The books – especially for the latest edition written for kids – and the documentaries on the food found in the outback soon provoked the character, the Bush Tukka woman.

That grew out of visiting different Country with different First Nations' mobs, and learning from the Traditional Owners own ways of catching grub to eat.

But the Bush Tukka Woman was, in fact, inspired by the ABC Anglicised version of a couple of decades earlier.

"This was the planting of a seed at nine years old," Samantha says.

Les Hiddins, a retired Australian soldier and Vietnam veteran, flew across northern Australia, highlighting Arnhem Land after he was awarded the Defence fellowship to conduct research to author the army's military survival manual by learning the ways of Aboriginal peoples. This work led to the popular show - Bush Tucker Man.

"When I was nine, I watched the Bush Tucker Man (Les Hiddins) for the first time on a black and white TV," Samantha said.

"I was so fascinated by this man and what he was doing that I realised there was so much knowledge that I didn't know as a kid growing up in the Kimberleys because really you don't know that there are other black fellas out there around the country, right?

"You're so isolated as bush kids that you're like the only Blackfellas on this planet.

"But when I was watching him and he was going into communities, and he was finding all the Jackey Jackeys as he called them, I was like 'who'd them mob?' and 'where are they?', as I just wanted to learn about them, even though I realised that is not what his show was about."

She realised that was a path she wanted to pursue, but adjusting his presentation where she would pass on Blackfulla knowledge but with greater cultural understanding and acknowledgement.

Ms Martin adapts practices that were ancient when Rome was a village, such as adding the twist of a Thai aluminium grill she found from her world travels that replicates the Indigenous cooking methods of a pit.

"What I'm trying to preserve, for thousands of years, is to make it a part of a modern-way of acceptance in our society," she points out.

"I am honouring our hunters and gatherers, our traditional practices as well, so as much as I love cooking bush tukka in a kitchen, my passion is cooking bush minya, or meats, as game meats, on a fire and utilising our traditions on the fire with coals."

Samantha relocated to Cairns 13 years ago where the cooking and dishes combine her own desert mob ways of the freshwater woman to the local swamp mobs that mixes rainforest and saltwater menu methods.

"Coming here (to Cairns), I was in my element because this area provides so much diversity of what I love," she says.

Further research has led the Indigenous chef to promote the nutritional values of her hand-picked choice of bush tukka and how its contributed to the health of past generations of her own people, before salts and sugars were introduced into some of their modern diets.

She found that kangaroo meat have the "highest source of iron and the lowest source of fat".

Lemon myrtle leaves are described as the "queen of the herbs" because the flowering plant that is found in sub-tropical Queensland rainforests is anti-viral and anti-bacterial that can lower blood pressure where people can live off them so not to "rely on the pharmaceutical industry".

Kakadu plums that are native to her Kimberleys are proven to have an extraordinary 3000mg of Vitamin C in them and eliminate a need for a high intake of oranges.

"It's a super food," Ms Martin adds.

While the highest nutritional sources comes out of the roots of many native berries.

"Bush tukka has a high source of vitamins and minerals that a lot of our western food doesn't have," she confirms.

She harvests her own Far North Queensland garden that includes native passion fruits, sandpaper figs, gooseberries, blue quandongs and rainforest plums that have short seasons.

"I can just look at the signs of their landscapes and the flowering to see what is edible," she says.

Samantha has collaborated with an exquisite Cairns restaurant named NOA that says it is a "modern Australian cuisine meets an international twist" on its website.

The head chef wanted to bring bush tukka onto their menu for one night and "did the right thing" to sought out the local expert.

"We had basically four weeks to plot this menu together," she explains.

They ran with her recommendations and many of her own recipes, but the reactions on the faces of some of the diners when Samantha announced and they tasted each dish was a look to behold.

Like the wild harvest green ants that surprised the creative French chefs.

"They didn't know they sting and bite back," she laughs.

"It was the funniest thing for me to watch, but I did pre-warn them that this was going to be an adventure and they did not quite understand what I was talking about.

"So green ants and French men don't mix well."

But there was a serious side of the culinary tasting: it was first public acknowledgement in Cairns of the food served of the Traditional people's lands.

"We're really treading on fine lines here with bush tukka, and that's why I want to grow the industry up here so that our cultural knowledge stays alive forever," she said.

The respect that Ms Martin has not only extends outside of the kitchen.

Like the day up Far North when she chased a goanna out of a moving car in front of the local Elders demonstrated her commitment to the craft of bush tukka.

"That's the real deal of who I am – I don't know shy away from digging holes and tracking a goanna at speed or killing a wallaby," she said.

"With who I am travelling as the bush tukka woman over this many years, I can say I have earned the respect of the culinary world."