Seed picking season is one of my favourite times of the year.  The sun is shining, you’re outside and as close to the natural world as you can be – elbow deep in a shrub, nose down in a grassland, gently harvesting seed into your bag or bucket. 

My favourite collection day this year was with Tony Fitzgerald and the Biik team harvesting Water Ribbons.  Water ribbons are the best bush tucker.  I think they’re Uncle Shane’s favourite too.  The tubers are crisp and crunchy, the closest likely flavour is the water chestnu,t I think.  Even the green, swirly seeds are a nice salad garnish and oh so easy to pop in your mouth and snack on while you pick. 

Wading into a billabong to harvest can be a bit intimidating.  First you push through the common reed – well above your head height and situated on the water’s edge in the boggy mud.  It rustles as you push through, eyes peeled for snakes. Wetland birds are part of the soundscape of the wetland experience.  We all saw some and heard more.   Tony got a little too close for comfort to a White Faced Heron, watching its slow lope and following its flight path as it resettled a little further away.  At about ankle depth in the water, the water ribbons start.  The Whanregarwen billabong is quite shallow with a gentle slope, so the water ribbons almost fill the whole pond.  Just when you think your gumboot is about to flood, the water ribbons give way to clear water – it’s just too deep to sustain them in the deeper water.

Tony, Ryan, Daphne, Blair, Jack, Ben and I spent an hour wading through the billabong, reaching into the mud for tubers, snacking on seeds and incidentally filling our buckets with seeds.  The seeds are tricky to tell when they are ripe – they stay green.  But if you close your eyes and feel the laden stem, the ripe seeds fall off in your hand effortlessly, the unripe seed need a yank to release them.  The plant is literally giving its seeds to you to help distribute.

We looked back when our buckets were full.  You could hardly see the dent.  There was some disturbance in the reeds where we had pushed through, seed scattered across the water’s surface ready to settle in the mud and germinate, and our buckets were full and ready to sow our seed in Horseshoe Lagoon downstream.

To me, this is reciprocity in action. Folk just like us have been wild harvesting seed for eons and there is a timelessness to our activity.   Harvesting spread seed in the pond, fed our little group happily and provided enough seed to help repair a downstream billabong.  The water ribbons in their turn filtered the water of sediments, cleaning the water.  They provided habitat for frog’s eggs to attach, dragonfly larvae to hide and macroinvertebrates to feed.  These creatures then sustain the wading birds, frogs, fish, snakes and lizards that inhabit the billabong.  For a short time, we became a part of the cycle, healing country and having a feed in the process. 

Written by Cath Olive at Euroa Arboretum and Tony Fitzgerald – Taungurung Land and Waters Council

Image credit: Biik Environmental

We are proud to partner with Cath and her team at the Euroa Arboretum and invite you to join our wawa Euroa experience to learn about how Taungurung People have harvested their food from wetlands for generations.