A Food-Led Recovery? Kangaroo Island, Fire and an Ambivalent Future for Tourism

ABSTRACT

In January 2020, Kangaroo Island burned. This island at the base of South Australia was ravaged by bushfires. From this tragic event, how can regional development be enabled through a realignment of foodscape and landscape? Food and food tourism activate an intricate bundling of texts and resultant literacies. This article layers an analysis, and builds a textured theoretical surface on a specific landscape. To assemble a project nestled in Kangaroo Island, post-disciplinary knowledge is accessed from food tourism, gastronomic tourism, popular cultural studies, claustropolitan sociology, cultural geography, regional development and creative industries. This article is not a case study. Instead, post-disciplinary theory is frontloaded, to shape and construct a frame for food tourism beyond cliches of regional development.