longgrass

English

Etymology

long +‎ grass

Noun

longgrass (uncountable)

1. Grasses that have been allowed to grow very high or that are from a species that grows very high.
   • 1947, Farming in South Africa - Volume 22, page 290:

     Experiments with veld fires in the longgrass-veld without grazing, once again revealed the undesirability of the practice of early burning and the extremely injurious effect of autumn fire.

   • 2003, M. Daily, The Seed, →ISBN, page 64:

     He had finished long hours of grueling exercise cutting longgrass by hand.

   • 2006, Jayel Gibson, The Wrekening: An Ancient Mirrors Tale, →ISBN, page 423:

     She found him lying in the longgrass of the meadow, staring at the night sky filled with the flickering brightness of ten thousand souls.

2. (colloquial) An area around Darwin, Australia populated by homeless indigenous people.
   • 2003 October, Cassandra Goldie, “'Why Government Is Treating Us like Animals?': Legal and Human Rights Perspectives on Living in Public Space”, in Parity, volume 16, number 9:

     There has been no detailed analysis of statistics regarding the particular impact of 'quality of life' laws on longgrass people living in and around Darwin.

   • 2006, Amy Horton-Newell, Lawyers working to end homelessness:

     Stella had spent many hours sitting with and acting in support of Indigenous families living in the "longgrass" around the urban centre of Darwin.

   • 2006, Emma Esther Kowal, The proximate advocate: improving indigenous health on the postcolonial frontier (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Melbourne), page 10:

     Specifically, the 'warriors' the song is about are people from the Maningrida songwriter's extended family who come to the longgrass in Darwin and get into drunken fights at the Tiwi shops.

   • 2006, Rob Amery, “Directions for linguistic research: Forging partnerships in language development and expansion of the domains of use of Australia's indigenous languages”, in Language Development in the Pacific: Endangerment and Survival:

     Yolngu workers have used it in health promotion talks with the youth and it makes sense to them in terms of the spread of AIDS from Africa, the 'longgrass' in Darwin, the beach at Nhulunbuy, etc.