Rachel Rose Withers

It’s often said that Australians are the only people who eat the animal on their coat of arms. While Australia is not alone—Danes eats swans, and Saudi Arabians love a bit of camel—there is something particularly interesting about the casualness with which Aussies both consume and wear their mascot. There’s a reason Anglo-Saxon Australians are often called “skips”; Skippy the kangaroo, is in many ways. the whiskered face of Australia, an emblem of its character. Then again, eating the national icon has always seemed, in its own way, a very Australian thing to do: impertinent, flippant, dismissive of pomp…