'Time to embrace history of country': Bruce Pascoe and the first dancing grass harvest in 200 years
Written by Lorena Allam and Isabella Moore
Writer’s farm in East Gippsland, Victoria, is producing native grains for flour and bread using traditional Aboriginal techniques
On the hill above Bruce Pascoe’s farm near Mallacoota in Victoria’s East Gippsland, there’s a sea of mandadyan nalluk. Translated from Yuin, the language of the country, it means “dancing grass”.
Pascoe and his small team of Yuin coworkers have never done a harvest like this before. There’s so much grass that both sheds are full, and Pascoe says they are “racing against the clock to refine our methods so we can extract the seed and make the flour. We have got to get this done in two or three weeks before the seed completely drops.”
Bruce Pascoe with his dog Yambulla in the mandadyan nalluk grass on the hill above his property.
Pascoe and his Yuin co-worker Terry map out where to harvest the mandadyan nalluk.
Pascoe (second from left) and co-workers (from left) Chris, Terry and Kate plan their morning on the property.
Terry looks into the harvest hopper, and burning chaff from seed.
The elders stuck by me firm, and some of them ... stopped me in the street to tell me to keep doing what I was doing
Pascoe looks at the chaff from the burning seed.
The road out of the farm near Mallacoota in East Gippsland.
Pascoe in the mandadyan nalluk with his neighbour’s dog at sunset.
Pascoe inside his kitchen with the glowing mandadyan nalluk view.
Pascoe slices the loaf of bread made from the mandadyan nalluk flour.
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