The embarrassing pure-bred white man below is Australia’s all-time champion bull-artist, working a confidence trick that would have few rivals in the history of the world. It is white Aboriginal fake, Bruce Pascoe, author of the White-Aboriginal fairytale DARK EMU. How does he get away with it? Tony Thomas has an answer below.
Bruce Pascoe’s Ever-Loyal Tribe
Tony Thomas, Quadrant, Jul 17 2025
With another fiscal year ticked over for Bruce Pascoe’s Black Duck Foods charity, it’s time for another look at the Dark Emu cult. Why do Pascoe and his Dark Emu thesis of pre-colonial native farmers continue to thrive despite having lost all credibility?
Part I: Pascoe’s Pals at the Copyright Agency
The Black Duck charity must be Australia’s most unusual. It’s the tenant running Pascoe’s 60ha Yumburra Farm at Gipsy Point near Mallacoota. Black Duck picks up all costs for operations and spends cheerfully on improvements to Bruce’s farm. It plants, harvests and markets Bruce’s native seeds, to revive the alleged farming practices of pre-colonial Aborigines.
From inception in 2020 to June 30, 2024, the charity acquired $1.36 million from taxpayers and $1.24 million from tax-deductible donations, a total $2.6 million in free funds. By June 2024 it spent all but $220,000, including $149,000 paid in rent to Bruce, $82,000 to buy his old tractor and farmlet odds and sods, and close to $100,000 buying vehicles and their upkeep.[1]
Bruce emailed his his fans a year ago, “We urgently need your support… To be honest with you Black Duck Foods is currently living hand to mouth … we need your help to keep going.” (My emphases throughout). When the 2024-25 accounts emerge next January we’ll discover how the project’s getting on, or not getting on.
Black Duck’s $2 million-plus outlays since 2020 have generated total farm sales of only $80,000. Hardly surprising as it’s currently pricing its flour from native seeds at $180-360 per kg (depending on volume discounts and species), versus $1.30 for a kilo packet from Woollies today. Pascoe sells his yam daisy seeds for grow-it-yourself fans at 12 cents each. Such tiny seeds run at about 30 per gram, so it’s expensive to scatter them by the handful.
Rather than proving the viability of pre-colonial farming, Bruce’s demonstration farm has proved the opposite. The lofty ambition of Bruce as a self-proclaimed Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian Aborigine is to convert Australians to native bread loaves and bulrush salads, while validating his Dark Emu thesis of pre-colonial farmer towns housing 1000 citizens apiece, or even, at Lake Condah, Victoria, 10,000 farm and fisher-folk. (Dark Emu, p75). Modern-day towns of that size include Broome, Katoomba and Castlemaine, thankfully all improved with sewerage, public servants, Coles for groceries and Kmarts for winter pyjamas.
The real question is how Bruce has got away with his thesis – rather, won laurels for it — for more than a decade.