Take that, Jamie Oliver!

When you tell people that you're making biltong, the responses are a fairly even mix of, "Oh, CHRIST, you wouldn't!" and "Mmmm - wouldn't mind a bit of that!"

Most of the "eeeeuuwwww!!!" noises have come from my mum and my sister. They're terrified we're going to poison someone. The Saffies have been drying meat for about 300 years now and they haven't died. Why d'you think the Boer soldiers were so damned good? Biltong, obviously. And maybe rusks. But no-one over the age of one likes rusks these days, so it must have been the biltong.

(Oh, speaking of the Boer War, one little hint for travellers - please, please don't go to South Africa and say the words "Breaker Morant". Just trust me on this one.)

So, Jack Thompson aside, we cut our first piece of biltong tonight. It was made using Oom Jaco's Secret Recipe, except the meat was kangaroo instead of beef or kudu.We call it "rootong". Heh.

There was, of course, one other small consideration. Bloke had to build what was essentially a 1930s' meatsafe (minus the legs and the leadlight doors and shit). In South Africa, when they make biltong, they just hang it in the shed or under the stoop and that's all fine. There aren't that many flies there because they have dung beetles. Australia doesn't have dung beetles. But then, we also don't have elephants, so you'd think that'd would balance itself the hell out, wouldn't you? Nooo, it doesn't.

It's not for nothing that waving your hand in front of your face is called "the Aussie salute". We have a bloody arseload of flies here. Blowies, bluebottles, plain old houseflies, little shit with wings that no-one really has a name for. Flies. At the delightful beach Bloke and I call home, if you're still sitting outside at dawn, the flies descend by the bucketload.

There seems to be a golden hour or three between about 3am and dawn when there are no mosquitoes and no flies. It's the three hours of power, ja? But once it gets to be bloody light, yer screwed, maaaayte.

So the biltong box came into being. For three weekends, the lawnmowing was ignored. In fact, the lawn is pretty much out of control. There are buffalo runners trying to smother the agapanthus and having a go at the paving. There was hammering and glueing and nailing in of cat-proof mesh. But finally it was ready to roll. We hit the Adelaide Central Market kangaroo butcher on Saturday morning and I mixed up a big whack of Oom Jacko's spice mix.

"I dunno, doesn't taste quite right. Whaddyathink?" I asked Bloke.

"Hmmdunnotastesallrightame," he said.

"Fooyyynne, then," I said.

So away I went, packing layers of meat and spice and marinade. And all was well.

The next day, I hung it on little hooks (made from recycled wire coathangers) in the biltong box and the biltong box was hung from a sturdy length of string suspended from the rafters of the back verandah.

Naturally, Mr Furpants and every fly in the area took a great interest in the box, but thankfully, such was Bloke's overengineering that none of them got in and the biltong remained free of maggots and kitty lick. And so, here we are, three days after hanging, sampling our first rootong.

And it's good! Even Mr F, who is notoriously fussy about what he eats, was begging for bits. Now we just have to wait for 24 hours to see if we die before we can let anyone else try it.