DJAKITJ

[Kolby Kerr]

My name's Kolby Kerr and I’m a Djaara, Yorta Yorta man.

When we were looking for the farm, like this 200 acre farm was, like, perfect for us. It’s right next to the Waranga channel

Yeah, we're planning to do, like, an aquaculture sort of set up here and also grow some native plants and that. And of course, the yabby farm as well.

We have 45 ponds there, and we’ll probably fill them up by the end of the year.

I think it'll be the biggest yabby farm in like, the Southern Hemisphere.

The whole ponds are set out, so it’s all gravity fed.

Like if you wanted to fill all ten ponds you could. If you wanted to fill one pond, if you wanted to fill them all at the same time, you could.

Good to use yabbies; just because like, they're really hardy and, they breed within every eight months.

Full production: we want fifteen tonnes per year, and when we start we're going to put 4000 in each of the ponds, and they should just start repopulating like crazy.

If it's profitable and if it's all working good, we'll hopefully build some more over in the next bay, of the farm.

Yeah, and another cool thing with yabbies is it takes 8 months to go to 7 grams to plate size.

Hopefully in the future, we have a, like, a restaurant of our own, and we can sort of just deliver it directly there, and also to pubs and all that around the place.

We're in the kangaroo grass field here, and when I started, it was basically the first job I worked on, we were using the seeder.

I don't know, Kangaroo grass is so resilient and just pops up so easy. You can always just watch it grow as you're like, working on something else on my farm and it's a good, like, thing to look at from the beginning.

Yeah, the yabby ponds over there in the corner, which is like half of the farm, and then we got Bush Bank project, and I think there’s a couple other things going in here, like the wetlands around the house.

So, yeah, in the future there's just a heap of work and interesting stuff going on really.

I was just on the crew, as a crew member, doing just odd jobs around that, and then I got team leader and now hopefully I'll go over to Manager of the farm.

And I thought it was like, pretty great opportunity, like pretty interesting and it aligns with my hobbies outside of work anyway, so it makes working here a bit easier.

I basically have Cert 3 in civil construction which is like excavator, backhoe, skid steer, a roller, and I’ve also got my truck licence, and all that.

And I was also involved with the architects, and I could put my opinion in, and really develop and change, like, if we needed to do something or whatever, which was really awesome to be part of.

If you have opportunities just take them. Doesn't matter if you’re not really interested or whatever, you might find out that you actually really like doing it.

With the yabbies that we’ll be producing here at the farm, we're going to give them back to members, like easy access type thing, and they can also eat them how they would back in the day type thing, because like, without them, we wouldn't really be here.

It’s a pretty interesting space to just keep an eye on and watch, yeah plenty of opportunity there too, especially for DJAARA or just Indigenous people in general.

[Rodney Carter]

I’m Rodney Carter. I’m the group CEO for the Dja Dja Wurrung. We're in the area of Lockington, at the moment, which is one place amongst many.

That’s my homelands is Djandak. So, we bought the farm ourselves, we've invested in the water, creating this as a working venture, as a yabby farm.

The rough scale of this, as a farm, is about 200 acres. The aquaculture area being utilised is about a quarter; that's made up of 45 dams or ground tanks that are fed from a main regional distribution, irrigation channel.

The pond size, each individually, is about two Olympic swimming pools in size. This particular species of yabby, that we’re now farming, is fast growing, very tasty and yummy, a protein.

and so I think for us, that's a really good product to put out to market.

I think as, probably dispossessed, displaced people, our connection to our traditional type of foods, is not always easy for many of us, and I think for Dja Dja Wurrung to focus on some specific species that now we can farm at scale, provides a unique opportunity.

This is the beginning, I believe of something ancient, but really exciting and in a new context, and we want to lead that, and we want all people to support it.

[Kolby Kerr]

My name's Kolby Kerr, a Djaara, Yorta Yorta man, and where I’m from, is from Echuca.

Yeah, I was talking to Dan about the yabby farm and I thought it was like, a pretty great opportunity. When I started, DJANDAK had a DJANDAK Academy, where they brought in the young Indigenous people, to put them through Cert III in Civil Construction. And then down the line, hopefully I’ll be managing it, make sure everything’s working smoothly.

At the moment we’re just putting in, like, infrastructure and really sorting the farm out.

We're planning a aquaculture training for members, and it's going to be called the ‘Pathway to Aquaculture’. That'll be a pretty interesting thing in the future.

If you have opportunities, just take them.