‘I don’t know why she’s stuck around’: Surviving the Dark Emu fallout
Author and poet Bruce Pascoe, 76, and his wife, editor, artist and publisher Lyn Harwood, 72, have built houses, battled bushfires, weathered a media storm, separated from each other and – finally – been reunited.
Bruce Pascoe and wife Lyn Harwood on their farm Yumburra, near Mallacoota in East Gippsland.Credit: Justin McManus
Lyn: I first met Bruce in the early 1970s when I was 28; we were drama teachers. We were both married. Two years later, we met again in Melbourne. I was separated; Bruce had remarried. He went on to separate from his second wife. One day, I went to visit Little Desert National Park [in Victoria]. I picked up a eucalyptus leaf and thought, “I’ll give that to Bruce” and I carried it back to
him in my bra.
In 1983, we went for a walk to a paddock near my house in Alphington. A new foal came up and touched my hand. Bruce was right behind me; it was a moment of deep connection, the beginning. We bought some land at Cape Otway – beautiful, remote, rolling country with huge manna gums and lomandra grass – and built a house that I designed. Our son, Jack, was born in 1985 and we lived there for almost 20 years. We’d walk him to the school bus and then we’d sit on two couches in the sun reading author submissions for the quarterly magazine Australian Short Stories that we edited.
When Dark Emu was published in 2014, the negative commentary [some journalists and politicians questioned Pascoe’s identity and his theories about the agricultural practices of pre-colonial First Nations people] came from various, mainly right-wing groups – not from people in general – but mud sticks. He feels it.
In 2017, we separated. It wasn’t [the discourse around] Dark Emu: he was away constantly, speaking at this conference or that university, connecting with intelligent women and having fascinating conversations about history. I felt as if I was at home doing all of the hack.
‘He’s also madly joyous and silly and daggy and can have a whole room collapsing in laughter.’
Lyn Harwood
During the 2019-20 bushfires, I was living at a house we’d built at Gipsy Point [in East Gippsland]. Bruce had bought Yumburra [the farm at which his Indigenous, food-growing enterprise, Black Duck Foods, is based], 50 minutes north, on the Wallagaraugh River. I spent three days at the Country Fire Authority station directing teams of firefighters on the radio. Bruce took his boat down the river to check on me.
Our relationship changed in 2021 when I had a fall; it gave him a shock. We went on holiday a few months later and, one morning, he disappeared. I thought, “Would’ve been nice to have a cup of tea.” He came back with a big bunch of flowers and said, “I want to take you to see something.” We drove to the beach and, in the sand, was this word, “Will”. Bruce said, “Keep coming.” It was “Will you marry me again?” It felt right and lovely and obvious. We still live separately – me at Gipsy Point and him at the farm – but we work and live together in both places.
Time’s running out. Bruce had a heart scare last year and had a stent put in. He’s preparing his next book, The European Mind, and I keep saying to him, “I hope you’ve written down the bones of this. If you’re not around, we need to know where it goes.”
He’s a deeply reflective person and in his own head a lot of the time; sometimes, especially when you’re dealing with Indigenous history, that can be pretty awful. He’s also madly joyous and silly and daggy and can have a whole room collapsing in laughter.
He’s shared his intelligence, his ideas and his vision with me, but, more than that, I love him. I can’t think of a better place to be than in bed with him at night with my head on his shoulder and our arms wrapped around each other.
Lyn Harwood and Bruce Pascoe. “He’s a deeply reflective person and in his own head a lot of the time,” says Harwood. “Sometimes, especially when you’re dealing with Indigenous history, that can be pretty awful.”Credit: Nikki Short
Bruce: Two years after we first met as drama teachers, I remember walking into a building for a new job in Melbourne and hearing Lyn’s laugh. I thought, “I recognise that laugh.”
After we started a relationship, I said to her one morning, “If you could do anything you want and have anything you wanted, what would it be?” Because I knew she wasn’t going to talk about handbags. She said, “I want to have a horse and live in the country.” The next weekend, we looked at a block of land in Cape Otway. Lyn ran over a rabbit on the way, a clean kill, and we made a fire and cooked it there. We bought the land straight away.
A few weeks after that, I found Lyn crawling under a prickly moses bush, looking for animal scat. I thought, not many women would do that. That bond with nature, with the earth, I’d found it difficult to find anyone who talked that language; I’d talked it all my life with my mother. I was always so impressed by my mother and father’s relationship. I’d wondered, “How do you do that?” And then I met Lyn.
‘Lyn got really sick of Dark Emu … Eventually, we couldn’t live in the same house.’
Bruce Pascoe
Lyn’s a natural architect. She designed our house at Cape Otway, a dramatic, magnificent house. Too magnificent for me. We did a lot of the labour ourselves; she’s an incredible worker. She said she wanted to start a family. I said, I’ve already got one, because I had my daughter, Marnie [now 48], but we agreed and, bang, Lyn’s pregnant and our son, Jack, is born.
When Dark Emu came out, our life changed dramatically. Neither of us was ready for it. Lyn was supportive of my writing, but suddenly, everyone wanted a piece [of me]. I was going to conferences, festivals, meeting research scholars. Lyn got really sick of Dark Emu. She’d leave the room when people came to the house to talk about it. That hurt me. We struggled for three years until, eventually, we couldn’t live in the same house.
I bought the farm in 2018. Our marriage was over, but I was always thinking, “I wonder how Lyn’s going?” She’d just had a knee replacement operation when she slipped at the jetty and, after that, I was really conscious of what the relationship was. With Dark Emu, she could see how upset I got when awful things were said, not just about my identity, but about me being a fraud and a liar. I’m not as strong as I used to be; I wouldn’t have survived it without Lyn.
I don’t know why she’s stuck around. I’m a difficult person and I live a difficult life, but her compassion is profound. Talking to her puts things into perspective and makes me calm. We’ll be together forever.
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