“The magnitude of the injury acquired when losing the entire continent and then having your history denied has to be better understood. How could a human brain and heart cope with such total loss? Not just life and limb, but to lose the land your people had ordered you to look after as if it were your mother. And on your watch it was lost! The trauma still reverberates, but we Aboriginal people must resist the place of shame the colony has designated for us.”
This excerpt from Black Duck - A Year at Yumburra, gives non-Aboriginal Australians an opportunity to step into the shoes of our First Nations people and feel, if just for a moment, the burden of history they bear on a daily basis.
Bruce Pascoe, author of the wildly popular Dark Emu, has collaborated with his long-time partner Lyn Harwood to create a diary of sorts, detailing life their property on the banks of the Wallagaraugh River on Yuin Country close to Mallacoota.
Yumburra is the Black Duck, the supreme spiritual being of Yuin people, and the name of their farm in Far East Gippsland where they grow over 40 different Aboriginal foods. Lyn is on the board of Black Duck Foods which has a mission to ensure Aboriginal people are part of the Indigenous Food Industry of Australia.
"The dream is to point out to the government that of all the millions made from indigenous food only 1% goes to Aboriginal people. We tell them we will take over all their Aboriginal employment programs and train our people to reform Australian forests and national parks by thinning and cool burning. We employ thousands and thousands in the forest and, in the agriculture and food industry we employ thousands more.”
In 2023 they found ‘the Yumburra axe' at the site of their new grain-processing shed affirming their place on the Dangar (damper or Bread) storytrack. The axe demonstrated that they were part of the ancient grain cycle, a tradition they continue with native grass seed harvesting.
Yumburra was badly impacted by the devastating bushfires of 2019/2020. Lyn went to work at Country Fire Association taking on a difficult communications job. “Her voice never varied as she passed out the bad news to those stranded by the fire.”
In the aftermath there were free concerts for locals including one where; “Kylie Minogue arrived but didn’t sing. The crowd was beyond caring.” This story resonated with me. I'd been at my old bush block after that Black Summer when the then Prime Minister choppered in. Too little too late, was the sentiment, like the dead canary in the coal mine of climate change.
“Humans don't want to lose their planet but we leave its administration in the wrong hands...We must not kill the golden goose....we must find ways of constraining our greed”.
Many see this country of ours as simply a resource to be plundered for monetary gain. Black Duck highlights the insanity of this false economy.
As well as running the farm Lyn and Bruce have an Bed and Breakfast operation and host many visitors keen to witness their enterprise. This leaves Bruce little time for retirement; “For a man trying to be a hermit I’m failing miserably”, he writes. And with his success as an author and his tireless work championing indigenous food security, came strains on his most important relationship.
The book reveals how he and Lyn suffered under public pressure following the publication of Dark Emu and separated in 2017, 3 years after it was published. They reaffirmed their vows in 2021, agreeing to live in separate houses located 20 minutes apart by boat. In our interview, Lyn talks about their new ritual of spending time on the river at dusk watching the array of birds coming home to roost.
As I spoke with Lyn I realised how noble the pair's efforts were to make white Australians understand "the gift" that Aboriginal Australia has to offer. Despite attempts to obliterate the world's oldest living culture, it has grown ever more present. A Map of Mallacoota from 1847 had been used as a drawer liner but was found with Yuin place names on it, names that are now being reinstated around the district.
And then there's the fascinating story of grinding stones recently found on Mithaka country near Birdsville. Stone blanks were mined with 3 million stones removed from the site. The local population only needed 1500 for their own use.
"Successful and peaceful Cultural and trade links show how trade can be done without wars and without the creation of billionaires and slaves."
Before colonisation the population of Australia is estimated to have been around 1-2 million. Today it is 26 million so traditional foods like Wonga Pigeon might not be a sustainable food source. But the conservative nature of Aboriginal spiritual and economic life is a lesson we could all learn from.
Both Lyn Harwood and Bruce Pascoe are heading up from Yuin Country to Bundjalung for the 2024 Byron Writers Festival.