140. Bruce Pascoe
On loving Country on the brink of great change
Bruce Pascoe in an Aboriginal Australian man, award-winning writer, and farmer. Last month I was fortunate to host Bruce in conversation at the brilliant Quantum Words Festival here in Perth. This was Schools Day, so there were about 150 people, mostly students, in the theatre. The session’s touchstone was Bruce’s extraordinary book Young Dark Emu. In keeping with its themes, we travelled deep and wide here, and in pin-drop attentive silence.
Anthony and Bruce with live audience at John Curtin College of the Arts (pic: Quantum Words Festival)
“Australia is on the brink of great change, and you’re gonna see it all. We talked about voting before. You people will be voting for some of the greatest changes this country has seen in 232 years. And I’m glad to see, from what I have observed today, I’m glad to see that you’re ready for it.”
The event billing read: In Young Dark Emu - A Truer History, Bruce Pascoe uses the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, to argue for an understanding of Australia prior to the arrival of Europeans as a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes, and thriving villages. Bruce discusses his work with Anthony James.
This conversation was recorded live at the Quantum Words Festival in Walyalup / Fremantle on 16 September 2022.
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Please note this transcript isn’t perfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read.
SPEAKERS
Bruce Pascoe, Anthony James (host), audience questions from 31.55
Anthony 00:00
Welcome to The RegenNarration, as we explore how communities are changing the systems and stories we live by. It's independent media, free of ads and freely available, thanks to the support of listeners like you. So special thanks this week to Suzanne and Stuart Hicks for becoming valued subscribers. If you too sense something worthwhile in all this, please consider joining Suzanne and Stuart and a great community of supporting listeners with as little as $3 a month or whatever amount you can and want to contribute. You can get all sorts of benefits, including, of course, continuing to receive this podcast, now with transcripts, every week. Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration.com/support. Thanks a lot.
Bruce 00:43
Australia is on the brink of great change, and you're gonna see it all. We talked about voting before. You people will be voting for some of the greatest changes this country has seen into 232 years. And I'm glad to see, from what I have observed today, I'm glad to see that you're ready for it
Anthony 01:02
G'day, my name's Anthony James. This is The RegenNarration. And that was Aboriginal Australian elder, award winning writer and farmer, Bruce Pascoe. Last month I was fortunate to host Bruce in conversation at the brilliant Quantum Words Festival here in Perth. This was schools day, so there were about 150 people, mostly students, in the theater at John Curtin College of the Arts. The session's touchstone was Bruce's extraordinary book, Young Dark Emu. And in keeping with its themes, we traveled deep and wide here. And in pindrop, attentive silence. We came on after a couple of conversations you'll hear reference to as well. And the David we mention is previous podcast guest, David Pollack from Wooleen Station. So settle in, as we resume positions after morning tea.
Anthony 02:07
Welcome back to you all, to a very special conversation on young dark emu. I'm Anthony James, in case you've forgotten from The RegenNarration Podcast. I'm wondering, we did a bit of straw polling before and some of you weren't here for it. But I'm not going to go over the whole thing again. But what I would like to do on this occasion is who's concerned about the state of the relationship between first Australians and the rest of us - who's concerned about that? That is the majority, maybe 90%. And who considers themselves involved in some way to try and improve that? A very small smattering, which is common, by the way. Who would like to be more involved in trying to improve that? Then you get a lot more hands - maybe half. Let's see how that might shift out of today too.
Anthony 02:56
I will acknowledge the Wadjuk Noongar peoples in this place, their country and culture on Walyalup / Fremantle, because it does astound me still to think that it's 10s of millennia worth of custodianship, knowledge holding, storytelling, art, the lot - what Bruce as well called the triumph of human endeavor. So here's to coming together more with our respective gifts from here. Let me tell you about Bruce a little bit then we'll get going. In Young dark emu - a truer history, Bruce Pascoe uses the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers to argue for an understanding of Australia prior to the arrival of Europeans as a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes and thriving villages. At least one early European explorer he cites called them towns. Young dark Emu is one of the most spectacularly produced publications I've ever seen. I actually go back to it more than the original Dark emu. For that reason. That original Dark emu won multiple awards, including the New South Wales premiers Book of the Year award. Young dark emu, too, has been award winning, including the children's book council of Australia's Eve Pownall award. And before all that, Bruce won the Prime Minister's Literature Award for young adult fiction for Fog a Dox, and all three of those books were published by the magnificent magabala books in Broome.
Anthony 04:26
And in 2018, Bruce was awarded the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in literature. Bruce has worked as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, barman, fencing contractor, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher, archaeological site worker and editor. He's been a decent cricketer, too. And no doubt mourns the end of the Richmond Tigers winning era. He is a Yuen, Bunurong and Tasmanian man and currently lives on his farm in Gippsland Victoria. That farm has also given rise to Black Duck foods, an indigenous social enterprise committed to traditional food growing processes that care for country and return economic benefits directly to indigenous people. Please give a warm hand for Bruce Pascoe.
Anthony 05:21
Welcome Bruce, welcome west.
Bruce 05:23
It's lovely to be here.
Anthony 05:24
We last spoke in South Australia at WOMAD in March. And that conversation started on the topic of love. Thanks to Anika Molesworth. And you were happy it did. So should we start today in the same fashion?
Bruce 05:38
Yeah, because what we're talking about is love of country. Love of our country. But I'm an old school teacher too. And very old. And I love teaching. Not because I loved the other teachers so much. But because I love the kids. I thought my students were funny, brave, eager. And I just admired their willingness to have a go. A lot of those kids I taught at Mallacoota where I now live, and many of them are my mates. You know, I played cricket and football for a long time. Not because I was any good. I was terrible. But I enjoyed the company of those fellas. And so whatever we do, it's been spoken about a lot today, you know, being passionate about what you do, but also be passionate about your land, about your country, where you come from. Because you all come from here. I didn't see too many hands go up when the question was asked about indigeneity but I know there's some First Nations people here. And you know, I welcome you brothers and sisters to this place even though it's not my place. I'm just very, very pleased to see you. And pleased to see everyone else here. All the students, all the teachers, all the people who's supporting those teachers. Teaching is easily the hardest job I've ever done. And also the most important.
Anthony 07:40
Had you started on the farm, what you're doing now, prior to Dark Emu?
Bruce 07:48
Yeah, I'd been a farmer before. During my days as a teacher, I bought an old farm and because I just love that country and started growing animals. But then my work got in the way and I had to sell that farm but after dark emu people got so excited about Aboriginal foods. But nobody got excited about aborigines. Nobody got excited about the prospect of Aboriginal people. They all wanted to eat the food. They all wanted to grow the food. Very, very few people wanted Aboriginal people to be part of society. And that's why I bought the farm because I thought we're gonna have to grow this food. We're gonna have to be on country. We're gonna have to say to people hang on. You can't eat our food, if you can't swallow our history. Australia's Got a black history it just doesn't know it.
Anthony 08:57
In a thriving or booming Bush foods industry and related stuff, bush medicines and so forth, it's said to be 1% owned by First Nations. It gives a hint of what you're getting at Bruce. Can you tell us a bit about what's happening at the farm and how the enterprise setup's working?
Bruce 09:15
Look that percentage 1% of all money made out of Aboriginal foods - we're talking Quandong, Bush tomato, finger lime, all of those things. 1% goes to Aboriginal people. When Australians Look at that 1% You have to look inside your own heart. What is going on? What is going on is colonialism. This is still a colonial country and Australians have been very ready to take the land. Very ready to start cooking with Quandong and finger lime and lemon Myrtle, but not ready to make Aboriginal Australians First Nation people part of society. If you can kick a ball 55 meters straight, which I wish a Richmond player had been able to do a fortnight - well, he actually did, but it was called a point. I won't start crying in front of you because I'm supposed to be grown up. But if Aboriginal people can run fast if they can kick a ball a long way and, and straight, they're accepted until they stopped running fast or playing footy. Australia is on the brink of great change you people who I'm so glad to see you here. And I think your stamina for talk is amazing. You're good students to be able to do that. Australia is on the brink of great change, and you're gonna see it all. We talked about voting before. You people will be voting for some of the greatest changes this country has seen in 232 years. And I'm glad to see, from what I have observed today, I'm glad to see that you're ready for it. Because my generation is not ready for it. My generation has proven that they're not ready for it. My generation introduced the fox introduced the rabbit introduced other feral animals - the Blackberry, rag wart, all of those things. Because we didn't understand the country. You know, I can say we - 80% of my genes are white jeans, Cornish English. So I can say we. And if I'm going to be critical of white people, I also have to be generous, because that's part of who I am too - a great part of who I am. But we're on the brink of change here. The Prime Minister, the first words he said to the country as prime minister, where I will see the Uluru statement go ahead in full. The first thing he said. A lot's going to happen. I hope as a country, we can do it graciously. I hope we as a country can do it without abusing each other. I hope we as a country can do it with happiness and love.
Anthony 12:46
Yeah, it keeps coming back to that foundation, doesn't it? I think it will throughout our conversation too from here. You talk of young people. And there's a real special young presence on the farm, too now, with what you're doing.
Bruce 13:00
I'm so proud of the young Yuen men and women who work on the farm. Everyone's young to me. But you know, even though some of these people are 30 years old, they're still young. They're still very young. And I get so much joy out of seeing their success. Because I panicked after dark emu came out because I could see that we were going to have those foods stolen from us again, not stolen by good hearted people, but stolen by rogues. And some of those rogues pretend to be the friend of Aboriginal people. So I thought we're going to have to get in there. We're gonna have to grow these tubers and grow the grasses to prove that we have stayed in touch with our culture. Because if you look up the judgment of I think it was Justice Olney who decided the fate of Aboriginal people on Yorta Yorta Nations in the 90s. And Olney said to those Aboriginal people, look, we can't give you that land back. We can't give you native title because your culture has been washed away by the tide of history. What he meant was it has been washed away by white Australians. We can't give you the land back. What I could see happening after dark emu is we were gonna have the same thing happen to our kangaroo grass, our microlena, our munyang, our murnong - all of these tubers and grasses that our old people had domesticated. We were going to lose them again. So I bought a farm - my mum and I bought an old house. Tiny little house, honestly you couldn't chase a dog in it, it was too bloody small. But it was on the Great Ocean Road. So increased in value. I sold that house, much against my daughter's wishes, because she loved that joint. And I bought the farm down in Gippsland. And then we hired Aboriginal people. And we were working at that stage and still do to a certain extent on the sales of dark emu, thanks to magabala books. And we employed people to start growing those grasses. A fortnight ago, we had enormous success in the economic conversion of kangaroo grass into pure seed, the pure seed into flour, and flour into bread. It's been, you know, we were doing it three years ago, two years ago we were better at it, one year ago we were pretty good. This year we've had success. And Australia's number one chef three years in a row, fella called Ben shewry, who's actually a New Zealand, kiwi. He cooked bread with it and pizzas last week, and he just had an enormous success. The crowd went wild. You know? And some of the Aboriginal people who work on the farm say, Unc, we're making food for rich people. What about our own people, local Yuen people? And unfortunately, in a world that we have, we sometimes have to appeal to the rich, we have to appeal to the people who have enormous influence over us. And that's what we're doing. You know, those young lads who said to me on Tuesday, Unc, you know, how do we get our own people to eat this food? And I said, you're gonna have to take it home to your auntie, to grandma to Grandpa, you're gonna have to take it home to them, and show them how good it is. Because the sad thing is that a lot of our people are brought up on Coles white bread. And that's all I've ever known the flavor of. Our bread is a bit more gutsy and rugged than that. And, you know, Australians hate wholemeal bread, you've only gotta look at the sales of it, to prove that. But it's good for you. My people have a really bad record of diabetes. And it's because of diet. It's for no other reason other than diet. And that diet might have been imposed during the mission years. But most of those mission years are over. We can improve our own diet by eating differently. And if we were eating the flour that we make on the farm or our tubers, our health would improve. But at this stage in the journey, we're appealing to rich people to help us. And to the credit of those people, many of them do. There are some who think they're God's gift to Aboriginal people, and are doing it for their own sake, not ours. But we weave a bit of a course, amongst those people. And we work with those people whose hearts are true. And we're getting there. And when I got that email yesterday, I was at the airport ready to come over here, and I got that email from that Chef about how successful his menu had been. How well received it had been. I thought then we've won a little battle in this war. And we win the next one and we might lose two or three but we'll win the next one after that, and eventually we will have Australia eating Aboriginal food. And with a lot of luck, we will have Australians saying this is Aboriginal food. How do Aboriginal people benefit? The one thing in terms of food Aboriginal people don't have is land to grow it on. Now, there's all sorts of regenerative farming going on in this country. But almost none of it is being done by Aboriginal people. For the one reason - we don't have land. This is something Australia can fix. You mob. You'll be voting to fix it in a few years time. Stay strong. Stay true. Stay fair. In 100 years time, I want people to say those Australians, they're fair, not fair in skin color like me, but fair in their hearts. Fair in their hearts.
Anthony 20:33
When you talk, Bruce, about, you know, the life style diseases, and I'll use that term because that's the term that's used around heart disease and diabetes, and so on. Because it's not just - again, it's disproportionately affecting First Nations, but it's Australia-wide. We're all suffering from this stuff. And we're all suffering from the land degradation that of course is related to it. That's where the junk food we're predominantly eating is coming out of junk land, or land we've made junk. So these things are all intertwined. And I guess this is where it shows - I mean there's multitudes of areas this shows - that we're all invested in it. All our well being depends on this. We need Aboriginal grasses, because they're the most, they're the best for the land, and they're the best at regenerating country. And we heard from Dave before - the getting the perennial grasses that have always meant to be there. We know other farmers in the wheat belt here in WA who have just let the grasses come back, your Mulla Mulla and so forth, rather than spraying them out, and that setting up their soil for the cash crops. There's win win on offer all over. But we need this - all of us - need this to happen, not just for being nice - or being just in this case.
Bruce 21:47
Yeah, When Europeans first arrived here with the cattle and sheep, the land had a different appearance - been managed by Aboriginal people. So in, in my country, there might have been a dozen trees to the acre - 20 or so to the hectare. And underneath was all the grasses and all the tubers. It looked like as the first Europeans who see it said it looked like a gentleman's Park. And I know that the southwest of Western Australia looked like that. And you saw the images of David's property before - that, too, would have been an open grassland, sweet ground. But the thing was that those hard hoofed animals that had never been in this country before, began to destroy the soil, began to harden and compact the soil. And the owners of those cattle never thought, what are we doing to this land, this old land? And now we are starting to ask that question, what are we doing? And David was saying before they're moving their cattle round on that property more now, they're not letting them eat right down to the ground, and destroy those perennial grasses - moving the cattle on so that the perennial grass can come and go to seed. You know, for a farmer, you'd reckon it'd be just common sense. If we want that grass to continue growing, we have to let it go to seed at some point in its life. And those sorts of practices are now becoming more and more common. There are still graziers who think that any concession to the environment is weakness. But there are so many more who see that loving country, caring for country, looking very closely at country is really important. We're gonna need kids mucking around in swamps and finding that turtle you heard about before, that's really important. Knowing your country, loving your country, because when you when you take over your father's or your mother's grazing property, you'll be the better farmer because of that love. We want people to be better at what we do. Not worse. Not be proud of being worse. You know, have a look at my ground here. Look, it's hasn't got a blade of grass on it. And I'm still getting a diesel subsidy. And I'm still getting, you know, carbon credits for doing nothing. I'm proud of that. Those days are over. And we need people, we need the turtle lovers, and the wild kids in the swamp. We need them to become the farmers of the country so that they get joy out of listening to frogs, and not feeling ashamed that they're sentimental about a frog. These are the things that drive our life.
Anthony 25:02
You know it blew me away to learn that out of the black summer fires, which scorched your neck of the woods, and obviously a lot of others too, but you were right in the heart of it as well, that old grasses came up out of that. And it says so much, including - well, I guess I come out of that thinking about the history where those sorts of fires just didn't occur here. Can we hold a vision of the return to symbiosis - even though it's a new context - of farming these grasses and grains, and keeping fire to healthily used levels? Can we imagine still being able to come out of this era of giga fire as they're calling it, and come back to that sort of symbiosis?
Bruce 25:53
Look, you come down to the farm, and you know, it's on the other side of the country - Mallacoota - exactly the other side of the country. But I'll tell you how much we're related to you mob. Because the people that Margaret River who sing a whale song sing it in Yuen language. Well, we're not sure they sing it in Yuen language, we might be singing it in theirs. But we sing the same whale story. Right across the country, we've been in touch with each other all that time. So that kind of knowledge is shared by Aboriginal people across the labyrinth of all the old songlines. We've always been in touch with each other. We've always talked to each other about loving country, looking after country. If you're embarrassed by the word love, you're going to be in real trouble in your life. Don't be embarrassed by the word love - loving country is not weakness. Loving country is what I think in future might become the nature of Australians. But on the farm, we light fires to burn the grass. These fires have been on that country for a long, long, long time. We've done soil profiles, in the first 230 years of that profile, big chunks of carbon, which means there's been bushfire. Trees being burnt down. Prior to 230 years ago, really fine grained carbon in the soil - been burning grassland. And Aboriginal people been doing that. We light those fires now - I'm in the CFA - when the CFA goes to put out a fire, we dress up as if we're going to war. When Aboriginal people light a fire, we walk through it in thongs and shorts. Because that fire that we like, isn't going to hurt anyone. I always say to the young fellas - I said it to my son who's now pretty good at this sort of stuff. And he will tell you about it. When you light that fire, you gotta be able to walk through it. If you can't walk through, it's too hot. And the thing about it is our fires just go so slow. So what happens, we always take a few snags with us and we have a barbecue and you know, a few roast potatoes, and we walk around our fire, keep an eye on it. Our dogs are there, our babies are there. Because it's safe. This is really safe way of looking after country. But we have to do it right through the end of autumn, right through winter, until it gets too wet. Every day, if we could we would do it every day. Because that whole country - Australian Aboriginal people have changed this country. But all the animals, you know, we're talking about biodiversity and mammal loss and extinctions and things like that. All the animals that Australians know and love, like the numbat, like the dunnart from my country, they were here and managed by Aboriginal people. That's what Europeans inherited. What has been lost has been lost by our land management ever since. So this fire regime that we do is really old. And it's been done by people who watch their country really closely. And we just have a nice time when we're doing it because there's no noise - a little bit of crackle maybe - but we can talk to each other across a fire. We can walk through the fire to talk to our mates to make sure that the northern most extent of the fire is not getting out of hand - and we can calm it down. And literally, you know we've got the fire in front of us like that and we can put out a bid just like that. We've got a wattle branch and we can just control the fire like that. It's such a peaceful operation and it's so good because - and we demonstrated this at a property called Yambulla. Probably the very start of winter. And we had some environmental scientists there. And they said, We've never seen a cool burn. And I said, Well, we'll, we'll show you one. So we, we lit up a bit of country. We had five Yuen men there. We walked around that fire, we lit it up along 100 meter stretch, we lit the fire. And they said, Well, aren't you worried that you're going to kill the grass? And I said, No, and I just - the grass was still smoking, I wiped my hand across it like that, and it was bright green. What we burned was the thatch, the dead thatch. And it was such a good example. And I was so glad that people had been there. This is what we've been doing all the time. And it's our responsibility, it occurred to me, to show other people how to do that. And not put on what is in effect $3,000 worth of CFA uniform, to go and fight a war against Australia - which is what we do. You know, the CFA drop incendaries onto the ground to start their fires. We have a little bit of bark, and we just introduce the fire like that. The difference is in the intent. Our intent is to look after country. The intent of the firefighter is to fight country. We don't want to fight country - we love her.
Anthony 31:45
There's so much in that Bruce. If it's your responsibility to share, it's certainly ours to learn. Alright, what about you guys? Do you want to chime in - any questions?
Audience question 1 31:55
Kaya Bruce. I'm second generation import - introduced species. And I have seen your TEDx talk. And it is - it made me want swimming lessons. I grew up in a small town in Lake Grace, and a lot of your practices with your controlled burning when you're talking about wearing thongs, I was lucky if I had a pair of thongs when dad would light up the end of a piece of poly pipe. And we burned off the farm. Two years ago, I was doing a unit at university. And they were talking about how this newfangled idea of sustainable burning came about, and I was talking about my experience, and they were saying how forward thinking that was. I'm probably closer to your age than most of the people in this room. And I was wondering, what is wrong, that you are thinking that this is new? We talk about not doing the mistakes of the past. Australia's topsoil is one of the most fragile in the world. We have, to my knowledge, no cloven hooved native species. Okay. Are you saying that your sustainable farming with your cows and your sheep? How do keep passionate and keep going when you can see this happening from your perspective? It would be a lot more heartfelt than mine.
Anthony 33:16
Let me just repeat that end bit. So the pointy end of the question was how does Bruce keep going in the face of being affronted by moments that was described there where you've been practicing burning on country in this manner, goes to university to learn more about it and is confronted by sustainable burning as this new idea? Those sorts of things. How do you deal with that and keep going?
Bruce 33:39
Well, I'm pleased to hear that you have been doing that. It's a really old practice, probably 120,000 years old, core samples in some parts of Australia indicating that Aboriginal people were doing this 120,000 years ago. So it is a very old practice. And really, the thing that keeps me going is you people. But also I've got four grandkids. And I have to stay hopeful. Because I have to do everything I can to give my grandkids a chance to make a difference. Because they're smart kids like you mob. They have to be given a chance to make a better world. But in order to make a better world, the world still has to be here. If we don't pull our finger out very soon, there won't be a world for the first time in history. You guys are living through a period - the first time in history when humans could destroy the Earth. So I'm sorry, but that's your responsibility. And I'm sorry it's your responsibility. And I'm sorry that it's my responsibility. But that's our fate. We've reached this point in history, we are the people still breathing. Still eating, still defaecating, we're alive because of all of those three things. It's our responsibility, it has come to us. And the world will either thank us or curse us.
Anthony 35:19
Another hand? Yeah ...
Audience question 2 35:21
Bruce, you're talking about your farm you have at home and I know, or I understand you're an integral part of the regenerative ag undergraduate degree for Southern Cross University. Is that correct?
Anthony 35:33
Are you involved in the regen ag degree at Southern Cross?
Bruce 35:36
Yeah, I'm involved with a few universities. Just following on from that before what keeps me going. I had a German student who loves Australia, and is doing her PhD in Australia, on the association between people and animals. And I could sense in her a deep sadness. And I, you know, we were talking technical terms about how to look after country and things like that. But I said, well, listen, don't be sad. You know, I could see it in her eyes. I could see it in her manner. I said, Please don't be sad. If you're sad, you make me sad. And if I'm sad, I stop. We cannot afford to be sad. We cannot afford to give up. So yes, I am involved with universities, I find them really frustrating institutions because they're run by a lot of old boffins. You know, old, old people who think they know everything. And really, you know, when I leave here, I'm going to drive, I'll get back into the East Coast, I'll drive back out west again, to a place called Windora, where archaeologists are examining a quarry, where Aboriginal people made grinding dishes, to render grass seed into flour. And, for me, this is going to be one of the great moments of my life. Because this is what dark emu is all about. Here was a group of people who not only harvested grass, they manufactured the tools to process them. And, you know, I might be easily pleased. And you know, Richmond supporters have to be. But this is a high point in my life, because I'm gonna go to see the quarry that old Aboriginal people made to manufacture these stones, so that they could turn grass seed into flour. It's a huge moment in Australian history. So yes, I do work with universities. Yes, I do find them incredibly frustrating, and pompous, and arrogant. But that's what we gotta do.
Anthony 37:59
And that's from a bloke who's nicknamed fossil - old boffins. You know, I'm still so moved by when you wrote about your finding in Melbourne Museum, it took you a while, but you found photographs of the first bread ever made in the world. But anyway, we're running out of time. And I do want to get - there were a couple more student hands. Can I get two - there's one there - Was there another one?
Bruce 38:22
There's a person here with her hand up.
Audience question 3 38:25
How do you stop the fire from burning too hot and burning the grass and trees?
Bruce 38:30
You know, it's a really good question. We walk up to a tree, usually a wattle tree, and we say to the tree - tree, we've got a job to do we want one of your branches. Can we take it? And the wattle tree hasn't got a voice so it can't say no. But just in asking, you know, our walking up to that tree and asking that question means that we are showing care. We're not going to strip the tree of everything, we can take one branch. And if we're watching that fire really closely, and we see a tongue of fire which is getting out of hand, we walk up to it and brush it down. Just cool it down. I've also got, you know, during the 2019 fires, the farm was burnt out. I kept the house but the farm was burned out. So I've got two fire tankers on that. So we're not arrogant, we don't light a fire and not have the fire tanker there. The fire tanker is there. If we're really worried about it, before we light the fire we might run a perimeter around it, just in case. You know, because we've got neighbors who you know get a bit panicky when they see smoke. And my district is very panicky now when it sees smoke for good reason. Because we lost 170 houses. People just nervous about smoke and I am nervous about smoke. The fire changed my whole sense of smell. Because all I can smell now often is smoke. But we can control that fire, we do the sensible things like I have the fire tanker, but we watch that fire. If that tongue of flame is getting away, we just calm it down. Now, firefighters find that intolerable, and politicians find it impossible. Because it requires a lot of people. And we might spend a day and burn three acres, hectare and a half. All day, five or six people. This world doesn't want to employ people. It wants to use machines. We can't have come fire with machines, people have got to be there. Once we get used to looking after the earth with cool fire, we will get used to the fact that we're going to have a lot of people back on country. And one of the things about Australian farming is you might drive for 1000 kilometers in a day and see no people. We need more people on the ground, we need more people back in country towns. You know, I used to play football for Apollo Bay - only one football team now and not going very well because just can't get a team together. But there used to be 11 football teams in that town. Because farming was so such small scale farming and forestry in those days that employed an enormous number of people. The whole place has changed - 11 footy teams, seven hotels, you know, the whole town has changed. When we changed our way of doing agriculture and forestry.
Anthony 41:53
It's such a recent phenomenon - just a few decades.
Bruce 41:56
It is. So is capitalism.
Anthony 41:57
Yes exactly.
Bruce 41:58
Capitalism is really recent. And we act as if we cannot touch capitalism. Sometime during your lives, you're going to be having to discuss as a part of the community, private ownership. This is not an argument for communism. This is an argument about care for the earth - can we afford private ownership? So good luck on that one.
Anthony 42:22
That's another conversation - be good to have too. Yeah....
Audience question 4 42:26
I was just wondering, apart from the kangaroo grass, what other types of grasses you grow on your farm?
Anthony 42:31
What are the grasses aside from kangaroo grass are coming up? It's a terrific question.
Bruce 42:36
We've got a grass we call mamunja nullac or dancing grass. It's microlinus depoidies - little low grass, little weeping grass. After the fires, we lost all our kangaroo grass and our spear grass. And I was devastated. But at the end of the fires, we had rain, the rain that actually finished the fires. And there was nothing on the ground. Within two weeks, we had a stand of microlinus depoidies - it was the best lesson. A fortnight after that we had red anther Wallaby grass in the forest. Never seen grass in that forest before. But because the canopy had been reduced, sunlight hit the ground, there had been a bit of rain. We had grass grow, there was a real revelation for me. I thought I knew country. You know, I lived in that country. Most of my life. I thought I knew that country. But what it taught what just didn't tell me about grasses. And you know, what we've got to say about these grasses is they have a root mass like that - huge root masses so they hold soil together, they build soil, they sequester carbon, which is something you ought to talk to politicians about. These are really important grasses, but they need sunlight. And if we go back to the old Aboriginal forests, you know, the 20 trees to the hectare, we'll also have the grasses growing beneath. And, you know, there's 1000 PhDs, there's 1000 incomes of $140,000 a year. And on university car, and overseas travel. I'm trying to suck you in now - to do this stuff, to do these studies. Not try and invent a wheat that has no rust in it, or a rice that has double the yield, but to take an Australian plant, which is used to Australian conditions, and grow it again. There's work there. And it's good work.
Anthony 44:47
Well you marveled at the sight of a young fella harvesting that grass for what you figured was the first time in 150 years.
Bruce 44:55
Yep
Anthony 44:56
Alright, tomorrow I'll be hosting a conversation with a Noongar bloke, and a couple of others, including Greg Mullins, former Fire Commissioner, you guys probably know well through that Black Summer time. We'll be having a conversation that goes on with some of these themes. Thanks again to the college for having us, to the organizers, and Bruce Pascoe.
Anthony 45:20
That was Aboriginal Australian writer, farmer and elder Bruce Pascoe at last month's Quantum Woods festival in Perth. For more on Bruce, his books and Black Duck foods, see the links in our program details. You'll also find a link to a video of our conversation along with some others that happened that day. And I'll put the conversation featuring Greg Mullins and co out next week. Speaking of next week, a reminder that you're invited on that Monday the 24th of October to join me and a host of other terrific people for a special day out at the extraordinary Haggerty farm here in WA. Event details are also on the website. And that's with thanks as always to the generous supporters who've helped make this episode possible. If you're enjoying what you hear, please consider joining this community of supporting listeners so I can keep the podcast going. Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration.com/support. Thanks again. And if you feel like it, share this episode with someone you know who you think might like it. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden off the Regenerating Australia soundtrack. My name is Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
Find more:
You can also watch our conversation here (starting at 2.06.30).
Young Dark Emu (and so much more at Magabala Books in Broome).
Music:
Regeneration, composed by Amelia Barden, from the soundtrack of the new film Regenerating Australia, available for community screenings now.