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A top Melbourne University agronomy professor has unveiled a project to get rid of Australia’s 25 million cattle and 70 million sheep. The plan would reduce what is viewed as excessive eating by the Australian public while tackling global warming by substituting smaller meat portions of bandicoot and kangaroo. On an exchange-rate by weight, the switch would involve about 2.8 billion bandicoots (substituting sheep) and 200 million roos (substituting steers), before allowing for any cut in consumption.
The professor is Bruce Pascoe, the university’s prestigious Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture. A problem he has yet to address is Australia’s loss of meat export income (about $15 billion). But I believe clever overseas marketing might restore such revenue. For example, Paul Hogan could tell the US to “throw another bandi on the barbie”.
Personally, I’ve sighted a bandicoot only once or twice in my lifetime. They’re shy, pointy-eared marsupials of about 2kg, and they have a cute running style described as a “gallop”. Nesting by day, they forage for insects, plants and larvae at night with their noses and long toes, leaving behind small conical holes called “snout pokes” and usefully distributing fungi spores. To waterproof their hideouts they kick a layer of soil over the top of the nest while it’s raining. They seem to ‘grunt’ happily when their muzzle chances upon food, and make a shrill squeak when disturbed, especially by multiple kinds of feral and native predators such as Professor Pascoe, who eats them. Six of nine species are extinct or threatened.
Pascoe describes bandicoots as “delicious”, and adds,“I should not know that but I do.” Legal sources say that given his Aboriginality, an Elder like Uncle Bruce would have hunting rights over otherwise-protected bandicoots outside Victoria[1], preferably involving spear or waddie rather than .223’s like the Remington M700 LTR. Even with firearms, Pascoe citing his near-countless Aboriginal ancestors would impress any magistrate adjudicating on his bandicoot afternoon teas. Pascoe has previously confessed to an Academy of Science subsidiary of his desires to shoot and eat roos “illegally”, presumably around his Gypsy Point (Gippsland) farmlet.[2]
I am suggesting we eat roos instead of cattle and sheep, which are incredibly destructive of soil. I personally bought a lamb roast because I know how to cook it, I have sage and herbs making it beautiful. I also eat roo. People argue against (killing) roos, saying they are beautiful and very soulful. The sight of a female roo nurturing her young, both asleep in the sun in my front yard really warms my heart. It is not disturbing to think at some stage I will shoot a young male roo illegally to get meat. A young roo is only as beautiful as a young lamb, they are still animals.
He continued that capitalist accounting systems legitimise tax avoidance in the Bahamas, so it’s no worse to shoot roos broad-scale and share the roo dividends equitably among the farm-holders – thus inaugurating the new discipline of Pascoenomics:
I don’t see that sharing the dividend of the country is descent into Communism, it’s asking us to cooperate. We should not allow some of our right wing politicans to say it is Communism and Socialism, it is co-operation because we don’t despise our grandchildren. We sensibly start looking at those things that would allow us to continue as a species.
The bandicoot-nibbling professor has been with Melbourne’s Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences since his ground-breaking appointment two years ago to bring his authentic Aboriginal know-how to Australian primary producers.[3] Thanks to ABC Education, the curricula crowd and state education departments grooming Australian students to be green/left voters, literally millions of kids to date have been brainwashed with Pascoe’s Dark Emu and Young Dark Emu tomes.
Professor Pascoe outlined his vision for the perfect Australian dinner during the prestigious Annual History Lecture 2022 for the state-backed NSW History Council on October 28.
He strongly suggests we personally learn to slaughter a bandicoot, but only with love and only when we’re really hungry:
How badly do I need that [meat]? Yeah, I am hungry, I am prepared to kill for that, I am going to kill as dingos killed a roo on my property two or three days ago, one of the most dramatic events I’ve ever seen.
There would certainly be dramas with Mrs (or Mr) Hungry Householder going after bandicoots like Canadians in pursuit of baby fur-seals. If the bandicoot herds are to be marketed as free-range fare, catching them could be arduous as bandicoots need up to four hectares per female and 40 hectares per male. Apart from healthier food and tackling climate change, a bandicoot diet should lead to peak fitness for those chasing a Sunday roast.
If the quest is too arduous, Pascoe has offered a lazier meal, namely snatching consumable roadkill from the crows and blowflies in outer suburbs like Dural (Sydney), Upper Ferntree Gully (Melbourne) and my ancestral Country of Gooseberry Hill (Perth). I’m citing from his latest book Country: Future Fire, Future Farming.[4] Chapter 4, “Future Farming – kangaroos and emus”:
There is another avenue of protein collection we might consider. Every morning in East Gippsland the road toll becomes apparent, with carcasses of wallabies, kangaroos, possums and wombats every kilometre or so. In this district it is not uncommon to find kangaroos and wallabies with broken legs as the result of being hit by a car.
I will never forget finding one huge injured male by following his moans of agony. And I will certainly never forget the look he turned on me when I arrived with my gun. He knew exactly what was about to happen, and was ready.
Who knew Professor Bruce was a kangaroo-whisperer?
We harvest these animals with our cars, so why not use their bounty instead of allowing their carcasses to bloat? If we are going to be meat eaters, and there are good arguments for some meat in our diet, then let us be economical about our harvest … Animals killed like this almost always die suddenly, without the meat-toughening release of adrenaline into their system.
Why don’t we have patrol vans with people licensed to inspect roadkill and harvest anything left that is fit for human consumption or could be made into dog food? A simple temperature probe is almost all that is required. Older carcasses could be moved further off the highway so that eagles and crows were not tempted to feed too close to the road. Stringent health and refrigeration rules could be set in place so that we don’t waste any resources. Harvesting that meat and the kangaroo and emu stock in our paddocks would mean we could afford to graze fewer hard-hoofed animals. (Kindle, p75 of 235).
The NSW History Council poobahs described Pascoe’s ideas at Orange as “fascinating” and “wonderful”. His lecture was held in the art deco ballroom of the Canobolas Hotel in Orange, NSW, traditional owner being the Sydney Sukkar clan (Buildcorp) . Mary McLean from the Aboriginal Land Council gave the Welcome to Country while Newcastle University’s frontier wars correspondent Professor Stephen Gapps provided introductions.[5]
Their ABC on November 15 promoted Pascoe’s bandicoot theme on Radio National. In addition, ABC Education on December 7 re-launched its 15-part homage to Pascoe’s erudition dubbed “Aboriginal Agriculture, Technology and Ingenuity.” Moreover, somewhere inside the ABC dark fortress are legions of workers toiling since 2019 like Wagner’s Nibelungen to create a two-part epic tribute to Pascoe’s Dark Emu book. As the ABC originally blurbed,
Over two parts, Dark Emu will see Bunurong/Yuin/Palawa author Bruce Pascoe presenting his fresh perspective on Indigenous history.
Undeterred by the book’s demolition last year by academics Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, the defiant ABC told the Sydney Morning Herald in July 2021 that “there are no plans to abandon the project. The spokesperson has assured the show will be produced in a way ‘that deals with what’s previously not been dealt with’”.[6]
ABC Indigenous earlier filmed Pascoe spruiking his Young Dark Emu audiobook, intoning his New Age poppycock against plangent and inspirational chords from an unseen orchestra:
I don’t want young Australians to change, I want them to think about justice . I would love them to be in love with their Country — Mother Earth — that would thrill me to pieces, because I would then be confident that She would be looked after and that is all we want, we want care for our Country.
Plangent background music hits a crescendo.
The audiobook he narrates is accompanied by what sounds like the same orchestra. The book is for 9- to 12-year-olds and retails at $8.99. Pascoe’s audiobook narration seems direct from the book, like
It was a very inconvenient truth that Indigenous Australians lived in permanent structures and in large communities, built dams and wells, planted and irrigated and harvested seed, and preserved and stored the surplus … we can only imagine the other Aboriginal villages and farmlands and enterprises [other than those he quotes and/or misquotes from explorers’ journals] across this vast continent that were never recorded…”
I was wondering about supposed ABC policy against advertising commercial products, until I saw that the audiobook cover includes the branding, “ABC Audio, Complete and Unabridged.” In the name of honesty and frank disclosure, all ABC references to Pascoe should include a disclaimer: ‘The ABC is a commercial partner of Professor Pascoe.’ [7]
In complete fairness to Professor Bruce, here’s his bandicoot blarney verbatim (except minor edits).[8] My only complaint about the History Council’s transcript is a disrespectful reference to the Prime Minister as “Elbow”.
Questioner: Bruce, you touch our hearts, I think… What’s the way forward? Where to from here, mate?
Prof Bruce Pascoe: Well, wherever we go, we do it slowly and carefully and thoughtfully. I’m talking about removing cattle and sheep from the landscape, not immediately, but I think it would be really helpful if we started eating kangaroos and bandicoots. But if we did that, we would have to ensure the health of bandicoots and kangaroos. And we’re not going to be able to exist in a country without those animals, without those grains in the short-term. But over time, if we reduce the amount we ate, because Western people eat far too much anyway, if we reduce the amount of meat we ate, as against vegetables… 80% of the Aboriginal diet in the East Coast was vegetables.
So, if we did all of those things, and transferred some of that attention toward the kangaroo and the other meat-bearing animals in Australia, but do it with love. We’re going to eat these bandicoot now, they’re delicious. I shouldn’t know that, but I do. If we’re going to eat bandicoot, we have to love bandicoot. Not for its meat, but for itself. This is what I was taught, this is the lore that I was taught. When you take a branch off the tree, you thank the tree. You ask the tree, “Is it okay if I take this small branch now, because I need it to do this other thing?” [Is Uncle Bruce channelling King Charles 111 and his potplants?] And when I was taught that a long time ago, I thought, “Oh, that’s quaint.” But what it does is, every time you reach for the plant, you think, “How badly do I need that?” And it’ll be the same with bandicoots and kangaroos. “How badly do I need that? Am I prepared to kill for that? Yeah, I’m hungry. I’m going to kill.” As the dingoes killed kangaroo on my property two or three days ago, one of the most dramatic events I’ve ever seen.
“But I think we go forward slowly, and carefully, and with love, and we reform a lot of our things that we’d inherited directly from the British, and that’s our diet. And we start changing accordingly. There’s so much, there’s so much to do. There’s so much to think about, there’s so much to study. We need experts, and we need this in conjunction with Aboriginal people who are on their land. And not just to tick a box, because that happens all the time, but to work carefully for the sake of Mother Earth. And if we think of her as our Mother, the whole idea of what we take from the earth changes, and how we take it, and how much we take. So, I can’t answer your question, except to say, ‘slowly’.
So you can now savour the lustre that Professor Pascoe adds to Melbourne University’s standing as one of the world’s top 34 universities. As the university’s associate provost, Professor Marcia Langton, said at the time re the $200,000 job (if full-time – the uni won’t say),
Mr Pascoe’s appointment provides an opportunity to further our understanding of Indigenous agricultural practices and to support him in engaging with Indigenous knowledge holders to document these ancient practices for future generations. Bruce Pascoe’s commitment to the recovery of Indigenous agricultural practices and native plants will enrich our curricula and contribute to the recognition of Indigenous knowledge as part of the mission of our University community.
Apart from Pascoe’s First Nations stature, his UoM appointment recognised his “enterprise” skills. His enterprise peers there include recognised global CEO John Pollaers of Pacific Brands, Fosters Group and Diageo PLC with credentials in advanced Australian manufacturing. Pascoe’s main “enterprise” is as a director of Twofold Aboriginal Corporation, near Eden NSW, which involved this auditor’s note to its 2022 accounts (p16) last November 25:
We draw attention to Note 1 to the financial report, which notes that the Corporation as at 30 June 2022 had its current liabilities exceed its current assets by $913,222. Due to these conditions, this indicates a material uncertainty exists that may cast doubt on the Corporation’s ability to continue as a going concern.[9]
Pascoe’s other major enterprise is the tax-deductible charity start-up Black Duck Foods, which the accounts say involves lease money to operate on his farm. In its last published accounts (for 2020-21, what’s happened to 2021-22?) Black Duck reported farm income of $22,045 and farm costs of $46,151. Its total income of $934,209 included $860,646 donations and grants. A key donor was the Dara Foundation ($300,000 over two years). Dara Foundation directors included the wealthy family of Anne Kantor of Kew, sister of Rupert Murdoch. The Kantors are noted backers of left-wing causes.[10]
Strangely, Melbourne University no longer touts Uncle Bruce as Aboriginal, with his official uni biog on “Find an Expert” now describing him as a mere “writer and farmer”. Under “scholarly works” the world’s 34th-ranked university includes Pascoe’s book Found, explaining, “This gentle story set in the rugged Australian bush is about a small calf who becomes separated from his family.” The calf seems safe from Pascoe, assuming the latter can spot some tastier bandicoots.
Pascoe’s opening words at Orange were that he is a Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man. Genealogist Jan Holland has found that every one of Pascoe’s ancestors on both sides of his family was of British descent. Pascoe is yet to name an Aboriginal forebear who can be checked out, and the Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanians are unimpressed. But Pascoe has other genealogical strings to his bow – sorry, make that notches to his nulla-nulla — as at various times he has presented as also being Wiradjuri, Punniler Panner, Koori, a descendant of the Ballarat and Geelong Aboriginal communities, and from a tribe bordering the Wathaurong of Geelong and Colac to the northwest, along with a South Australian Aboriginal connection. He discovered he was Aboriginal at the age of 30 — no, make that 18, — no, make that 9, when he was speaking the Wathaurong language with his family.[11]
I could go on but my legal opposite-sex partner is calling me to dinner.
“What’s that, darling? Arr, not bandicoot stir-fry again!” (I wish she’d never heard of Bruce Pascoe…)
Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is now available: Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. For a copy ($35 including postage), email tthomas061@gmail.com.
- [1] Under Commonwealth, Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia law, Aboriginal people are able to hunt substantially unrestricted by conservation laws. Certain exemptions apply in New South Wales and allowance is also made for residents of trust lands in Queensland. However in Tasmania and Victoria there is no special provision to take account of Aboriginal interests.
[2] At this keynote lecture, Pascoe also impressed Australia’s science leaders with his account of how a talking, amphibious whale circa 12,000BC guided his ancestors out of Bass Strait and into Victoria to avoid them getting dunked by the rising seas.
[3] As a bonus, the university announced, “The contribution from Indigenous Australians could also help contribute to carbon neutrality in food production.”
[4] Thames & Hudson and National Museum Australia. Co-author is ANU historian Bill Gammage. The publisher describes Pascoe as “an Aboriginal Australian writer”.
[5] Inaugural president of the History Council and author of Gudyarra, the First Wiradyuri War of Resistance.
[6] The SMH named Darren Dale, co-founder of Blackfella, as an executive producer of the series.
[7] Magabala Books quoted more than 300,000 sales just to mid-2021, and 95,000 sales of the Young Dark Emu spin-off for schoolkids. Assuming sales of 350,000 and 100,000 respectively (and ignoring the audiobook), with price of $17.99 and $20.50, and royalty of 10 per cent, that’s a conservative $835,000 to Pascoe. He might have cracked the $1m by now.
[8] Would you believe, I spent an entire day transcribing his one-hour talk, before I discovered an official transcript existed.
[9] Twofold’s earlier accounts likewise copped auditor concerns, e.g. 2021: Material Uncertainty Related to Going Concern
We draw attention to Note 1 in the financial report, which indicates that the Corporation incurred a net loss of $466,107 during the year ended June 30, 2020, and, as of that date, the Corporation’s current liabilities exceeded its current assets by $542,937. These events or conditions, along with other matters set forth in Note 1, indicate that a material uncertainty exists that may cast significant doubt on the Corporation’s ability to continue as a going concern.
[10] This foundation cancelled its charity status last May.
[11] Vague Pascoe explanations have included,
‘Some people think that my association, family association, is too slim to worry about. I’ve said that all along that these are distant relationships, but they’re important to me, as is every relationship in my family.’ The Age has reported that Pascoe feels “obliged” to identify himself as Aboriginal after his experience with Indigenous people who helped unravel his ancestry. ‘What do you do, [say] thank you for introducing me to your family, see you later? You can’t.’
In my few hundreds of thousands of miles of driving I’ve only managed to add a couple of rabbits, a slow lizard and a cockatoo to the national roadkill larder. No bandicoots and no roos. Bumper gathering is awfully inefficient.
Pascoe’s new form of sustainable agriculture… A fleet of road trains required to provide the carcasses. Might also need to vastly expand the road network to provide the required protein.
According to online sources Australians eat about 90kg of meat per annum, for the 26million of us that’s a mere 2.34 million tonnes per annum, or 1.8 billion pancacked bandicoots (skin and guts included).
Looking forward to his new recipe book.
Yes, and I think the road trains chug through a litre of diesel every 1.2 to 1.5 klms. Oh bugger I’ve just destroyed the left wing myth of global warming as it relates to climate change.
Bunkum….
I got two roos in one go crossing the Hay Plains at dusk. And a big repair bill for the HSV!
Get off the road after dark and do not use high beam if you intend on driving. That’s the advice a truck jockey gave me.
The brilliance of Pascoe as a Charlatan is (thankfully) exceeded only by the brilliance of Tony Thomas as a humorous debunker. The pity is that those beguiled by this ‘Professor’ – hilarious in itself – not only lack sense but probably also a sense of humour (and almost certainly don’t read Quadrant!).
The great pity of it all is that in years past our State Governments decided to save the taxpayers money by closing down the institutions that housed people of a certain mindset and allowed them loose into the community without supervision. Some of them are a menace, especially the ones with flowing beards and a far away look in their eyes.
It appears that some of our higher-learning institutions aka universities, have taken over the role of those institutions you mention. The trouble is that the new in-mates are not confined.
The Appetite for Self-destruction* demonstrated by our so-called elites is so all-consuming that I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2050, Ethiopia was sending us emergency food supplies.
Also, does our esteemed Professor, perhaps having unwisely overindulged in steamed marsupial, not realise that we export 75% of our agricultural produce to other countries, many of them much poorer than us and in dire need of all the calories we can grow? How are they going to react when we tell them we are replacing our finest beef and lamb with large native rats?
*Apropos that classic album by Guns ‘n’ Bandicoots.
Yes but Iain you do not require calories when the destiny in mind is ( warmly embraced global famine ) death.
I’m being cute in paraphrasing the leaders of the great gulag of insufficiency ( the USSR) pronounced to US as s-sucker.
I think our beloved blonde locked tight fisted Scotsman (aboriginally) of infinite aboriginality has a hidden acquired taste for freshly culled Cuckoos- often, all the time.
“If we’re going to eat bandicoot, we have to love bandicoot. Not for its meat, but for itself. ”
I love fish, pigs, chickens, lambs, cattle and crustaceans.
1] How Can Anyone Take This Charlatan Seriously? Well Australia’s [self-proclaimed] Number One university and world leader in education, teaching and research excellence does.
2] The High Court held in Yanner v Eaton in 1999 that a person claiming to be exercising traditional native title rights was exempt from the Queensland fauna protection legislation when he took two crocodiles. The High Court – God save that Court – didn’t think Yanner should be confined to using a spear or waddie. It was OK for him to exercise his traditional rights using a modern boat with an outboard motor and a steel tomahawk to administer the coup de grâce to the crocodiles.
I like it how socialists prefer ‘cooperation’ to ‘capitalism’. Well, ‘capitalism’ is not what we practice – its a Marxist epithet. We practice free markets (tampered with by a interfering governments). That’s how we cooperate. Free exchange of value in an open market where the customer makes the choice. When socialists tout ‘cooperation’, they mean coercion…but they forget that detail in their deceptive blather.
Dingoes at Mallacoota?
There are certainly some dingos there but of the Australian Slang variety.
What will happen to the $26 billion overseas livestock market? Presumably it will be replaced by skippies.
Has anyone consulted the bandicoots about being wiped out, and how does this sit with “guarding Country” and so on?
So many questions Bruce, and so little time before your gravy train runs into a rock.
March in above comments makes the obvious inference that if we switch to bandicoots there won’t be any left. A bit like the demise of thylacines on the mainland before European settlement, when they were under the care of expert guardians of country, not like those Tasmanian evil settlers. As an aside, I was in Canberra recently visiting Parliament House in a tourist capacity and came across Pascoe’s book for children in the souvenir shop, but no sign of any books published by Quadrant. Perhaps they had sold out?
Reminds me of when, years ago, I went to the National Library bookshop here in Canberra looking for Keith Windschuttle’s books on the fabrication of Aboriginal history. Not only were there none to be had, but the staff denied any knowledge and were not interested in finding out.
Good one Tony, again.
This is a seriously disturbed man, primarily I think because he seems to have now completely transformed himself into an aborigine in his own mind and persona….except he hasn’t.
The calm reasonable look, with the carefully developed beard and hair, plus the dreamy descriptions of wildlife, carefully tempered with a bit of realism here and there, topped off with sort of magi like maxims and aphorisms…….this is the exact opposite of the real aborigines, in fact it’s just another version of the noble savage image in the mind of one who really is….a white anglo-saxon celt, with the make believe kept up by all the stupid ( or smarty clever) academics or whatever supporting him.
Rousseau has to be floating around in that strange, strange mind somewhere…..surely, and I get the feeling if he ever snaps out of this make believe world, and wakes up, he’ll go stark raving mad and have to be committed…..soon one would hope, before doing any more damage to gullible minds.
A psychosis called “delusional disorder” springs to mind.
It’s an affliction that seems all too common in academic and political circles in this age..
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9599-delusional-disorder
Ah ,Tony, re the pic on the home page, is Bruuuuuuce channelling Back page Pete, per chance?
The abysmal level of knowledge of food production processes let alone its challenges common in our urbanised population means that many will not even blink at the Pascoe’s ludicrous suggestions. Most of them would not understand the concept of domestication of certain species over thousands of years so that they could become relatively reliable food sources. Aboriginal Australians would not have survived to the twenty-first century if it wasn’t for the diligence of their womenfolk utilising seeds and tubers of native plants.
Perhaps Pascoe et al are trying a new tactic in a decades long area of activism – this from ‘Playing for Sheep Stations:A Discourse Analysis of Wild Dog Management and Control Policy in
New South Wales, Australia.’
Penelope Margaret Marshall 22ndMay 2013
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Australian National University
Prominent political ecologists now call for the removal of sheep from the Australian landscape altogether
and advocate reintroducing dingoes to large tracts of Australian sheep grazing country as a means of preserving native animal species’ (Milbum 2007 September, Smith 2009 13 August)
Milbum, J. (2007 September). Leading Sheep update – Wild dog control a key priority for Queensland sheep producers. The Mulga Line, Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
Smith, D. (2009 13 August). Bid to reintroduce dingo to arid zones. The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Fairfax Digital.
As if!!
Nobody to my knowledge has so far worked out a way to farm those jumping marsupials. The fencing problems are huge. Plus Pascoe’s cited project for gathering roadkill has a certain inbuilt probability of adding him and/or whatever number of his disciples to the roadkill count. That is, provided The Law continues to turn a blind eye to his/their feasting on protected wildlife.
Apart from the almost certainly insurmountable practical problems of kangaroo “husbandry”, eg fencing as you mentioned, anyone who has shot and butchered kangaroos well knows, they stink. The bigger they are, the worse they smell. Roasted, small, young kangaroos taste quite nice, but raising them for food is impracticable. The only way to safely kill them is to shoot them, and can you imagine the potential problems with that?
Ian, I think lbloveday has solved the road kill farming dilemma, get a 400hp HSV Holden – surely the kill ratio will improve with speed- not sure about the economics of the exercise, might have to run the concept of viability passed Prof bandanna.
Weight also helps – it was a 4wd Avalanche, 2100kg, and I was towing a laden tandem trailer, so 4 tonne all-up – swerving to avoid was a no-no. Oh, and 550HP courtesy of an after-market supercharger, exhaust system, spark plugs & leads…
Great to see that Uncle Elder Professor (why not yet Doctor?) Bruce is making full use of those skills he picked up working in drama for the Victorian Education Dept all those years ago, while still a whitefella. They certainly stand out in his prolific video productions. But I suspect he’s “pushing the envelope”, or maybe even testing boundaries, in publicly admitting he’s killed and eaten bandicoots. As Doug D alludes (about 10 comments up), “The High Court held in Yanner v Eaton in 1999 that a person claiming to be exercising traditional native title rights was exempt from the Queensland fauna protection legislation when he took two crocodiles”. I wonder if this could be the basis for a test case, not so much of Pascoe’s faunal depredations, but of his Aboriginal identity? It would certainly lift the lid off a large can of worms, and highlight a major challenge regarding the proposed Voice to Parliament.
Tony you deserve a VC for contending with this endless onslaught of intellectual garbage from Pascoe and his defenders! It amazes me that it is not possible to take legal action against people who perpetrate fraud on such a vast scale. Of course, Covid sceptics are readily silenced, but I guess ‘the science’ depends on who controls the narrative.
It’s what people want to believe.. A classic example is the Piltdown Man hoax perpetrated by British amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson who flogged his find off as the much anticipated ‘missing link’. Public opinion was swayed and many ‘scientists’ just assumed, no independent research required, that this was the real deal. The hoax was finally debunked, in large part, by Isabelle DeGroote who said against such blatantly poor scientific method: “not to see what they want to see, but to remain objective and to subject even their own findings to the strongest scientific scrutiny,”
‘So, if we did all of those things, and transferred some of that attention toward the lefties in Australia, but do it with love. We’re going to eat these lefties now, they’re delicious. I shouldn’t know that, but I do. If we’re going to eat lefty, we have to love lefty. Not for its meat, but for itself. This is what I was taught, this is the lore that I was taught. When you take a head or flowering bud off the marijuana plant, you thank the plant. You ask the plant, “Is it okay if I take this small head or bud now, because I need it to do this other thing?”(haha!) And when I was taught that a long time ago, in the words of Dennis Hopper, I thought, “Far out, man.” But what it does is, every time you reach for the pot plant, you think, “How badly do I need that?” (No need to answer – that’s a rhetorical question.) And it’ll be the same with lefties. “How badly do I need that? Yeah, I’m hungry! Line ‘em up!” As a crow ate a frog on my property two or three days ago, one of the most cathartic events I’ve ever seen, since I watched a bandicoot give birth, I thought,’ How selfish and unsustainable too, as they didn’t leave a scrap of roadkill for me’. So I also suggest we start eating crows. And frogs, too. Screw ‘em.’ Professor Hannibal Lecter
Brilliant, thanks!
If this is the type of twaddle Professsor Phoney teaches under the protection of the Associate Provost (who sacks genuine Aboriginal people for exposing fakes) then the University is producing some Graduates with worthless degrees.
Perhaps not totally worthless because such knowledge could contribute considerably to the extinction of Australian micro-fauna just as their forebears were deemed to have contributed to the extinction of Australian Mega-fauna.
This comment comes to you from the land of the Boru people, where all are equal and there is no racism. We judge people by what they say and do, not by their colour or who their great, great, great, great grandparent in minute proportion was.
.
Thanks again Tony. I have to say though that I wonder why Brucie Baby or Melbourne Uni have not yet sued you or other Quadrant authors. Could it be that they would have no prospect of success?
What Bruce Pascoe doesn’t realise, even though he’s Professor of Agriculture (!) is that the Eurasian domesticated animals (sheep, cows, goats, horses) have a distinctive herding nature that makes them highly adaptable to domestication. They can be rounded up, yarded, handled and moved (sometimes with difficulty!) I don’t know about bandicoots, but like to see the good Professor round up a mob of roos, yard and handle them, load them on a truck and get them to an abattoir. He’d probably do better with flying pigs.
Roos are hunted, shot, bled out and hung from trucks before going to the abattoir. They are full of toxaplasmosis and a source of enteric pathogens. Definitely a threat to people with immune suppression like the elderly,infirm or those recovering from Covid.
Romanticising them as food for aboriginals is just that.
When working as a jackaroo on a sheep station, Clem, the aboriginal overseer and my boss enjoyed a hearty lamb roast and he ,the wife and kids all pitched in.Free range cattle eat dry herbage stimulating it to put out green shoots, which the roos eat. The aborigines cleared land with fire to promote grazing area for roos so they could be lured there with the green pickings, cornered and slaughtered.
Modern Aboriginal descendents prefer lamb.
This is not an an argument for over stocking, just proper land management.
Incidentally road kill is full of pathogens as the guts burst filling the carcass with Clostridial toxins and e coli.
Notice that nothing ever scavenges a wombat road kill as they bloat in the sun.
I think anyone who wishes to farm or hunt Bandicoots should be kept a long way from any Faculty of Ag or Vet science.
These are declining fast due to feral cats, foxes and land clearing and are on the extinction brink.
It has been said that good taste is its own reward, but the destruction of such a sensitive and beautiful native animal on the altar of climate change shows how far that path has travelled.
Pascoe’s Wet Market Meats, Aboriginally Sustainable Voice Certified ‘Net Zero’, Prime Koala, Kangaroo and Emu along with Dugong, Turtle, Crocodile and Goanna, Instructions on slow cooking available on request.
We have bandicoots around our property. They are cute. This is by far the stupidest idea I have ever heard.
Assuming BP is a rational actor (stay with me on this for a moment), I think he must be having the time of his life seeing how many legs he can pull, and how far before everything comes apart. When it does all fall to pieces, he can then hit us with his next best-seller, “How I gulled the great and the good, became the toast of the town, and made a motza along the way!”
My dad has a friend who is on a list of people that get called when there is fresh road-kill. If it’s picked up quickly enough, it’s considered safe to eat (at least, it was before the world went mad; I don’t know if the system is still in place). However, this friend lives in the Northwest Territories, Canada; such practices might or might not be viable, here.
In a previous life I was in Manado, North Sulawesi when a car ran over a dog in front of where I lived. Rather than tears or remonstration, the owner took a machete to it and auctioned the sections on the spot. Dog was often-times on the menu in road-side eateries.
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Local lads would catch a cat and spit-barbecued it for their protein hit. Rice-field rats were trapped and eaten; much tastier than the urban vermin species I was told.
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Has anyone had a go at the Rottnest Island quokka.
They would certainly be a lot easier to round up than a cantankerous bandicoot.
And of a convenient rotisserie size.
Delicious as a roast, stir-fry or mar-soup-ial.
Jan 10/2022 8.20am
Are they any good steamed?
A little birdie tells me that suburban bush turkey’s on the east coast are Bellissimo, and they are also in plague proportions..
Just like Peter O’Briens comment though on Dingoes, I think the word is out – all being scared witless (petrified) as soon as the words Bon Appetite passed the albino Aboriginal Bruce Pascoe’s frontal lobe on the way to his lips.
Assuming BP is a rational actor (stay with me on this for a moment), I think he must be having the time of his life seeing how many legs he can pull, and how far before everything comes apart. When it does all fall to pieces, he will be ready to hit us with his next best-seller, “How I gulled the great and the good, became the toast of the town, and made a motza along the way!”
Years ago I wrote poetry on the many boring airline flights.
Some appear relevant these days, by chance.
Geoff S
http://www.geoffstuff.com/cuisine.docx
Brilliant Geoff, brilliant, and funny to boot.
Sounds like his honour and your quarry barely escaped with their respective senses of humour intact.
At the end of the day did his honour find your elaborations enlightening?
A great investigative analysis as usual, thanks Tony!
Uni of Melbourne continues to lower its standards of once strong academic integrity. Vibes have overtaken facts.
That seemingly unquestionable “indigenous” falsehood claim by Pascoe is another example of that institution’s capture by “wokeism”.
As a past donor to that institution where my sister was an esteemed Professor, I now toss their follow-up letters asking for donations into my family’s compost bin.
They produce more good there, interacting with like-value substances.
Geoff,
A very clever little bit of rhyming verse and entertaining to boot….well done.