The Coachbuilder’s Column: Volume 14: Issue 7:     27th May, 2024: Two more books to be considered.

Following are some broad comments on two books read recently, as listed:

• Line in the Sand by Dean Yates [2023] [on the question of PTSD]; and,
• Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra, by Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood [2024];

17^th May           

 ‘Line in the Sand’ by Dean Yates [published in 2023, 335 pages].  The powerful and personal story of the war time journalist, Dean Yates and the way in which he descended into the world of PTSD, arising out of various conflicts and natural disasters he reported on, and essentially brought to the surface by the incident of July, 2007, when two of his Reuter’s staff members [and other bystanders] were brutally gunned down by an American helicopter in Iraq. Yates’ memoirs are based on his extensive personal journals, together with emails and other documents. All brought to a head by the revelations of that 2007 incident that has seen Julian Assange incarcerated for more than a decade when he shared the findings of Chelsea Manning and released the video ‘Collateral Murder’ in April 2010. For years, Yates’ PTSD was accentuated by his feeling of moral failure in that he had not done enough to prevent the deaths of his un-armed colleagues and the other innocent bystanders, nor to press hard enough as a journalist, for the truth to come out.

A difficult book to read at times, from both the deeply personal depiction of PTSD, and the ways in which modern warfare is so often conducted.  One quotation from near the end of Yates memoirs.

‘Can the same be said for Collateral Murder? Absolutely. Americans had a right to know how their government was conducting war in Iraq. How their taxpayer money was being spent.  The cost being imposed on Iraqis.  So did the people of Australia, whose conservative government had eagerly followed Bush into Iraq. It was in the global public interest because up to that moment, so much of the war in Iraq was hidden from view.  ‘Collateral Murder’ runs a mere 38 minutes. But from the pilot chatter and the casual way permission was given to open fire, we can reasonably assume this was the everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attack on the van was not out of the ordinary’ [page 293].

As described in various sources
Dean Yates was the ideal warzone correspondent: courageous, compassionate, dedicated. After years of facing the worst, though, including the Bali bombings and the Boxing Day tsunami, one final incident undid him. In July 2007, two of his staff members were brutally gunned down by an American helicopter in Iraq.
What followed was an unravelling of everything Dean thought he knew of himself. His PTSD was compounded by his moral wound – the devastation of what he thought he knew of the world and his own character and beliefs. After years of treatment, including several stints inside a psychiatric facility, Dean has reshaped his view of the true meaning of life. Here, in all its guts and glory, is that journey to a better way of being. Dean has been to the blackest heart of humanity and come out with strength and hope.
Line in the Sand is a memoir that is going to resonate for generations to come. It tackles the most important topic of our age in an unforgettable way.

About the author

Dean Yates is a workplace mental health expert, public speaker, podcast host, and journalist. He is an outspoken advocate on mental health, press freedom and government accountability.
Dean worked for 26 years at Reuters, the international news agency. He was bureau chief in Iraq, responsible for 100 people, and later head of mental health strategy from 2017-2020.
Dean lives in Evandale in Tasmania with his life partner Mary Binks and their three adult children Patrick, Belle and Harry.

From QBD Books  – a selection from the book, produced for QBD blog readers, and shared for my readers on here:

I was a successful foreign correspondent brought to the brink of suicide by workplace trauma, who recovered because of my obsession to get better and the human connection of my family and a mental health system that worked (yes, you read that right).
A combination of factors tipped me into turmoil after my PTSD diagnosis in early 2016: emotional denial about my condition; a psychiatrist in Hobart who didn’t get me; social isolation; and indifferent bosses. Then I was a risk to myself.

One night in late July 2016 I told my wife Mary that I was “toxic” to my family, I just wanted to find peace. I had a plan. Mary was loving but firm: “You need to be hospitalised in a psych ward, and soon.”
Two weeks later I was in the Ward 17 psych unit run by Austin Health in Melbourne, a specialist PTSD unit that treats veterans and first responders.

Establishing safety began the moment I entered. Sure, my anxiety was sky-high, but the intake interviews eased me into accepting I needed hospitalisation. There was no stigma about the word suicide. The building itself was peaceful. I had a private room. Within 24 hours I was sitting across from Dr Maryam, my new psychiatrist, a woman born in Iran who was curious about me. My mind and body felt safe. My treating team could begin to try to stabilise the symptoms I’d accrued from covering the Bali bombings, the Boxing Day tsunami, the Iraq War, from losing two staff to a US gunship attack in Baghdad on July 12, 2007.

Human connections underpinned the treatment I got during three admissions to Ward 17. Dr Maryam, spiritual care worker Cath and social worker Christina helped change the

course of my life. They opened their hearts and took the journey with me. Psychologists Dee and Wendy did it back home in Tasmania. Mary has always been there, ready to talk, listen and to also challenge me if she thought I wasn’t travelling well. It was Mary who said I needed to return to Ward 17 in 2017, and then again the following year. She shared her observations with my treating team. There were no secrets.
I suspect some practitioners prefer to stay behind walls they call boundaries. It’s safer there. Mary was a journalist for 20 years, took 13 years off to raise our three kids then re-trained as a counsellor. She came across this great quote when counselling refugees from war-torn parts of the world: ‘I’d rather a therapist with a warm heart and no boundaries than a therapist with a cold heart and firm boundaries.’ Of course, no one should take the ‘no boundaries’ thing literally. But I’ve seen 25 doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists about my mental state. I know when someone sees me. I feel connection. I can sense a cold heart from a warm one. I know waitlists are horrendous, but if your gut tells you that your therapist doesn’t want to take the journey with you, find one who will.
I’ve concluded from the seven years I spent writing my book that the most critical factor in trauma recovery is the quality of someone’s support network: family, friends, GP, counsellor, psychologist/psychiatrist, employer, workmates, access to hospital services, housing, the justice system. Yes, a support network extends beyond family and friends. It’s the breadth and depth of those networks and how they function together – not the original trauma – that largely determines recovery outcomes. In other words, whether a trauma survivor can find safety. Process their trauma, rebuild relationships, find purpose in life, and live with dignity.
Human connection is the foundation to this.

Writing in the Australian Book Review [July, 2023], from where I gained the impetus to purchase this book, Kevin Foster begins the article as follows:

We’ve all seen the video. The black and white images are washed out, almost solarised, by the heat and glare of a Baghdad morning in 2007. As the men walk and mingle on the street, we can make out the length of their hair, pick out the skinny from the stocky, and identify what they are wearing, loose trousers, casual shirts – one with distinctive broad stripes. Mercifully, we cannot discern their individual features. All the while, the Apache helicopter hovers, unseen and unheard, its cameras trained on the men below. The crew exchange terse messages with US troops in the area and their commanders back at the flight line. Having identified weapons that the men carry and confirmed that they are not coalition forces, the crew request and receive permission to engage, manoeuvring the gunship to get a clearer shot.

Suddenly, shockingly, the ground around the men erupts as the Apache deploys its 30mm Cannon Chain Gun. This weapon is not a ‘gun’ like a rifle, shotgun, or other small arm, but ‘a combat-vehicle mounted war cannon engineered to take out enemy vehicles, convoys or troop concentrations’. It fires 300 rounds per minute. You can imagine, but probably shouldn’t, what it does to a human body. Most of the men fall where they are hit, some manage a few paces before they are cut down. Through the cloud of dust and debris that has been thrown up by the hail of fire, those still twitching or crawling are shot again. When a minivan driver taking his two children to school stops to help the wounded, his vehicle is riddled with fire, the driver is killed, and the children injured. Besides the driver of the van, Saleh Matasher Tomal, two more of the victims are civilians, both employees of Reuters, one a twenty-two-year-old photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, the other a driver and fixer, Saeed Chmagh, a forty-year-old father of four. The Apache crew had mistakenly identified the telephoto lens on Namir’s camera as an RPG – a rocket propelled grenade launcher.

25^th May

When I read and reviewed Bruce Pascoe’s book ‘Dark Emu’ a few years ago, I admitted to being a little sceptical about some of his claims regarding ancient practices of the Indigenous peoples, while at the same time, recognising that Pascoe was likely to have much more authentic evidence, than the opinions coming from those inflicting  personal attacks after it’s publication,  sprouted by people like Andrew Bolt and the like! Pascoe faced harsh criticism, and vicious innuendos when the book was released, by Bolt in particular, claiming that Pascoe’s claims of Indigenous descent were a pack of lies! And many jumped on that bandwagon. I personally had no reason to disputePascoe’sclaim.
So it was with interest that I have just finished reading ‘Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra’ by Bruce Pascoe [with Lyn Harwood], published in 2024, 290 pages.
This was a fascinating read, and written describing a period of 12 months [and six seasons] with Pascoe, his family, friends, and business and community associates and their daily activities. It was centred around his property at Yumburra [near Mallacoota], where the organisation ‘Black Duck Foods’ was established, as a guideline for developing traditional food growing and land management processes based on old Indigenous practices. As noted in the book blurb, the authors ‘invite us to imagine a different future for Australia, one where we can honour our relationship with nature and improve agriculture and forestry’. I could comment in quite substantial detail about many aspects of this book, but just a few points which stand out from my reading of it.

• The amazing inter-action that Pascoe demonstrates with the native birds and animals that he comes into contact with on a daily, almost hourly basis, over the 12 months of the book’s time line.
• The enormity of the many trips to takes to gives speeches, presentations, attend family get-togethers, and community and regional functions, etc – I could almost feel the exhaustion, and his relief at returning home to Yumburra after those many ventures away;
• Pascoe’s very personal perspectives on the effect on himself and the people of Mallacoota during the 2019/2020 bushfire disaster.
• The extensive glossary of Aboriginal words demonstrated for the many birds, animals and plant life described through the course of the book.
• Pascoe’s frequent references as part of his everyday life, to seemingly minor issues, viz, returning home after a tiring day, and simply didn’t feel; like cooking a meal; regular flashbacks to this sporting achievements [or failures]; the Richmond Football team; and most importantly, the insertion from time to time of the reactions, and the affect on him, of comments and/or criticisms about his Black Emu book, and his almost philosophical attitude to accepting the attacks that arose from that publication.

A few brief quotations to perhaps illustrate this normality so often of much of his life”

• I’m aware that I often complain about tiredness but it is a fact of my life these days’
• Neither am I as tolerant of cold weather. There was a severe frost on the last day of July and it made me ache;
• The lyrebirds had been really loud and active over the last few weeks, as the autumn weather gets hold of the country….Their calls really do take over at this time of year and their increased activity is a delight;
• I wasn’t picked in Mallacoota’s grand final cricket side! What, ..you can’t find a place for a seventy -four-year-old of limited agility whose bowling no longer rotates…..;
• Lyn and I went to a frog identification workshop in the Genoa Community Hall and got very enthused. To celebrate I cooked a roast meal for the family on the BBQ firepit;
• The Murnong [a Yam daisy plant] undergoes a real dieback in late summer but are now shooting again. The lilies never seem to go into recess and we have found that we can get delicious tubers for at least nine months of the year and often twenty to thirty tubers per plant. …I think this will be a staple of Australian Salads in the future. But will Aboriginal people  be allowed in the industry? Or is ir just one more dispossession?
• Wonga pie [from the Wonga Pigeon] is a favourite meal, unsustainable for 26 million people, but very tolerable when the human population  was 1-2 million, and the totemic system ensured no food was over-harvested;
• Their ‘relatively pet’  Ganggang Cockatoo [named Clark] –  A magpie eventually stabbed Clark in the eye and killed him. Just one more reason to hate Collingwood!
• I love the Kings Cross Hotel but, while the view from it is colourful and lively, and I never tire of that vibrance, I do grieve for the struggle of many of those lives. Next morning, I had a sad breakfast in the dirtiest  café I have see in years. Home of the desperate.

And so we could go on!!!   Indeed, as described as part of it’s publicity, this book is –  ‘a deeply personal story about the consequences and responsibility of disrupting Australia’s history’  – [history from the European perspective anyway].

In summary, Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood have invited us onto the Country they call home in Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra, reflecting on life after publishing Dark Emu.  In the aftermath of devastating bushfires in north-eastern Victoria, the couple rebuilt their farm. Here, they run the Aboriginal social enterprise Black Duck Foods, committed to traditional food-growing

I can do a much better job of describing this book through the views of another author – Tony Birch is an Aboriginal Australian author, academic and activist. He regularly appears on ABC local radio and Radio National shows and at writers’ festivals.  Writing for the Sydney Morning Herald on April 4th, 2024,  he described ‘Black Duck’  as ‘At its heart, Bruce Pascoe’s Black Duck is a love story of both people and Country’. I’ve copied his article in full, and it begins with a summary of the outcome of Pascoe’s Dark Emu, and how the success of the book [despite the criticism it received] partially led to the Black Duck project.

Tony Birch writes  – 

‘When Bruce Pascoe published Dark Emu with the Indigenous-owned publishing house Magabala Books, he could not have foreseen the phenomenon that the book would create. Ten years after its release in 2014, Dark Emu has sold close to 400,000 copies. It has had a major impact on our understanding of the relationship between Aboriginal agriculture and Country.

The book has also met with controversy, most of it surfacing when it became obvious that the reception of Dark Emu was also producing energetic dialogues of inclusion and respect between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.

Pascoe’s critics took aim at his argument that Aboriginal people could not be relegated to the status of mere hunter-gatherers. The irony should not be lost that those who suddenly sought to privilege the concept of the hunter-gatherer, were defending a trope that had historically supported the legal sleight of hand, terra nullius, being that Aboriginal peopled wandered on Country and had no productive claim to it.

What Bruce Pascoe highlighted with Dark Emu was a sophisticated interconnection between agriculture, sustainability and Country.

While some argued over the interpretation of archival documents and footnotes, others influenced by the book accepted the generosity offered by Pascoe in subsequent lectures, writers festival conversations and the inevitable Ted-Talk.

Pascoe was able to harness a willingness, or more perhaps an existential desire, among a sector of the non-Aboriginal community to end a narrative of conflict, to reconsider their relationships to Aboriginal people and Country, and to proactively address the ecological damage to land caused by colonial agricultural practices and increasingly, climate change.

Dark Emu was primarily a challenge to existing power structures and the marginalisation of Aboriginal people. Pascoe was able to build strong and sustainable relationships, which were themselves a threat to the inequitable status quo. Aboriginal communities became interested in Pascoe’s work.

It was gratifying for Aboriginal people, particularly in south-eastern Australia, to realise that, finally, their traditional land-management practices were being valued, and that young people in their communities could engage with Country with renewed pride. Non-Aboriginal rural communities and farmers were also influenced by Pascoe’s research. Some have since forged partnerships with him.

Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra is structured as the story of a year’s activities on Yumburra farm, a property on far south-east Gippsland where Bruce Pascoe and his partner, Lyn Harwood, run the enterprise Black Duck Foods. It is a venture they were able to establish due to the commercial success of Dark Emu.

The book visits the six seasons of Indigenous culture on the farm, from “late summer”, through “autumn”, “winter”, “early” and “late spring”, before ending in “early summer” the following year. We are provided with an insight into the commercial operation of the farm, and Pascoe’s poetic eulogising of the bread baked from harvesting indigenous grain. He sure loves his bread.

We also meet the many characters, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people who have been drawn to Pascoe’s vision. But Black Duck is far more than a log of a farmer’s year on the land, a story of the occasional eccentricities of rural life, or Pascoe’s need to habitually mention the Richmond Football Club. (An annoying, decades-old tic of his.)

This is a deeply philosophical book. It is the story of a man and the woman he loves deeply, their growth as individuals, as a couple, and parents and grandparents, deeply respectful of Country and the need to live humbly with it. At its heart, Black Duck is a story of watching, listening, reflecting and hopefully, growing.

It may seem odd to describe the book as a “comfort read”. The book addresses the difficult issues of frontier violence and massacre, the heartbreak of seeing a loved dog in pain and having to shoot it, and the continuing damage done to Country by the ill-informed and wilfully ignorant. The concept of comfort could also dilute the power of Black Duck, particularly when the political etymology of the work conjures memories of ex-prime minister John Howard’s “relaxed and comfortable” recipe for engaging with the past.

Black Duck reinforces our need to actively care for Country. There are many people across Australia doing so, regardless of the obstacles they face. I take comfort from the fact that having faced damaging bushfires, droughts and the increasing occurrence of un-natural events, people such Pascoe, Harwood and many others reject a sense of helplessness. They are on the front line of ecological activism in the truest sense.

 I take great comfort in my understanding that Aboriginal communities across the continent are the knowledge holders we need to protect Country into the future, and to fully value the non-human animal and plant species that create the balance we require to become genuinely inclusive.’

About the authors

Lyn Harwood has worked as an editor and artist amongst many other things.

Bruce  Pascoe is a Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man and a writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children’s literature. He is the enterprise professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne. He is best known for his work Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture.