Dr Beth Gott, OAM

Vale Dr Beth Gott, OAM (25/7/1922 - 8/7/2022)
Dr Beth Gott graduated in Botany from Melbourne University, later studying the life-cycle of Rye cereals at London University. On her return to Melbourne, she conducted research on wheat varieties grown in Australia before turning her attention to ‘ethnobotany’ and the study of the traditional uses of native plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Beth_Gott

https://www.monash.edu/science/schools/biological-sciences/staff/beth-gott

Since the 1980’s Beth has assembled extensive databases of plants used by the Aborigines of south-eastern Australia, while also documenting the landscapes created by Aboriginal management, including the use of fire. Dr Gott created and curates the Aboriginal Educational Garden at Monash University. Click here for further information about the Aboriginal Garden at Monash and to download a plant list

In 2017 Beth was made a Member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to the biological sciences as an ethnobotanist specialising in the study of the use of native plants by Indigenous people".

School of Biological Sciences Honours Prize

In 2019 an Honours Prize was established in Beth's name. This prize is awarded annually to the Honours student with the best thesis with applied outcomes/benefits.

The art of healing: five medicinal plants used by Aboriginal Australians

People have lived in Australia for at least 65,000 years. In all those generations the land provided original Australians with everything they needed for a healthy life.

At least half the food eaten by the first Australians came from plants, and it was the task of women to collect them. Fruits, seeds and greens were seasonal, but roots could usually be dug up all year round, because the earth acted as a natural storage cupboard.

read the full article published in Monash Lens ...

The 2018 Murnong Festival – Celebrating Biocultural Knowledge

The ‘Merri Murnong’ group held its 10th annual Murnong Festival in November 2018, offering guests the opportunity to learn more about indigenous plants, arts and culture, and to take part in the annual gathering and tasting of the ‘Murnong’ (or Yam Daisy) – traditionally an important staple food plant of south-eastern Australia.

Ethnobotanist, Dr Beth Gott, Adjunct Researcher and creator and curator of the Aboriginal Garden at Monash, was a speaker and special guest of honour, in recognition of her valuable ‘reconstruction work’ – a result of years spent combing archival and first encounter records to piece together a picture, and databases, of the traditional uses of native plants for food, fibre, medicine and tools.

Elders and members of the Wurundjeri acknowledged and thanked Dr Gott for the important role she has played, over many decades, in recording and preserving indigenous biocultural knowledge and heritage, collaborating with indigenous people in a culturally sensitive manner, sharing the results of her research, and ensuring that the plant knowledge she documented remained accessible to indigenous communities.

The humble Murnong (Microseris lanceolata), a perennial herb that resembles a Dandelion, has small yellow flowers and milky tubers that can be eaten crisp and raw, or wrapped in a basket or paperbark and cooked in an earth oven, producing a soft, nutritious and somewhat sweet flavoured root vegetable, which tastes a little like a Sweet Potato.

While the Murnong was once widespread across the grassy plains of Victoria, as noted by early explorers like Major Thomas Mitchell, it rapidly disappeared with the arrival of the colonial settlers and their grazing, hard hooved sheep and cattle. Becoming increasingly scarce, only remnant wild populations remain, on less disturbed patches of land.

Historically, with the moving of indigenous people from their home country onto mission reserves, and with the accompanying shift to a diet dominated by the white man’s flour, sugar and tea, the knowledge and skills of the indigenous women (who, with their digging sticks, used to turn the soil, thin out the clumps and harvest the Murnong), also started to disappear.. Distant memories were kept alive by elders who had grown up learning about their country and its plants or hearing the stories of how traditional life used to be.

Part of an ongoing revival of indigenous practices, languages and biocultural knowledge, the Merri Murnong group (formerly the Merri and Edgars Creek Confluence Area Restoration Group or MECCARG), has been helping to keep this living heritage alive. The community group continues to host working bees to sustain and grow Murnong and other culturally significant indigenous food, fibre and medicine plants within the ‘Murnong Patch’ in the Merri Creek parkland, on Connolly Ave in North Coburg.

For further details visit https://www.facebook.com/meccarg/
For information about the Monash Aboriginal Garden or to download a plant list, visit
https://www.monash.edu/about/our-locations/clayton-campus/gardens-at-clayton/aboriginal-gardens

Story and photos* by Tess Holderness (tessholderness@gmail.com)
Tess is a MA research student within the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, currently writing a thesis on ‘The Life, Work and Legacy of Ethnobotanist, Dr Beth Gott’. If you would like to contribute your recollections of working with (or being inspired by) Beth, please contact Tess on 0412 195 283.

Images from the Murnong Festival

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the annual Murnong Festival on the banks of the Merri Creek in Coburg. Dr Beth Gott (centre) with traditional weaver, Auntie Bronwyn Razem (R), cultural educator, Wurundjeri artist and Djirri Djirri dance coordinator, Mandy Nicholson (lower L), the first indigenous MP to be appointed to the State Parliament, Lidia Thorpe (top L), and members and friends of the ‘Merri Murnong’ organising group.

Dr Beth Gott, with traditional weaver, Auntie Bronwyn Razem (front and centre), Merri Murnong and community group leaders, and Wurundjeri performers and representatives.

Merri Murnong member and Festival MC Synti Ng, and Dr Beth Gott, holding some cooked tubers.

Murnong and native lily tubers, freshly baked in an earth oven.

Members of the Djirri Djirri dance troupe.

Women perform traditional dance moves, sharing stories about creation, family and Country.
Keeping the culture alive involves passing it on to younger generations.

Stacie Piper, First Nations curator and a member of the Djirri Djirri dance troupe, catches up with Dr Beth Gott after the performances.

Murnong plants being grown in polystyrene containers.

The yellow Murnong flower resembles that of a Dandelion. (*Photo by Suzette Hosken).

The ‘Murnong Patch’, a site for growing native plants of cultural significance, along the Merri Creek in Coburg.

Vale Dr Beth Gott, OAM (25/7/1922 - 8/7/2022)

We are saddened to report the passing of Dr Beth Gott, OAM, just a couple of weeks short of her 100th birthday.

Beth was a plant physiologist and ethnobotanist, and adjunct researcher in the School of Biological Sciences here at Monash University. Beth’s area of research expertise was in the use of Australian plants by Indigenous Australians, where she made major contributions since the 1980s in assembling extensive databases of plants used by the Aboriginal peoples of south-eastern Australia, for food, medicinal purposes, as tools or as fibre, while also documenting the landscapes created by Aboriginal management, including the use of fire.

In 1985, Beth created the Aboriginal Garden at Monash University (initially located out the front of building 17, but moved in 2007 to its current location near MSDI). Beth continued to curate and spend time working in the garden over three decades. This is a place of inspiration and learning; a place where staff, students and the community at large can visit to learn about indigenous plant knowledge, and a place that showcases the diversity of Koorie languages in Victoria.

In 2017 Beth was made a Member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to the biological sciences as an ethnobotanist specialising in the study of the use of native plants by Indigenous people".

In 2019, in recognition of Beth’s outstanding contributions to scientific research in botany, and contributions to research at Monash University, the School of Biological Sciences established a Prize in Beth’s name, awarded annually to the Honours student within the school for the best thesis with applied outcomes or benefits.

Beth continued her research well into her 90s, regularly working from the School, working in the Aboriginal Garden, joining in discussions in the staff common room, and inspiring all those she interacted with.

Beth will be greatly missed within the School and more broadly at Monash. Her legacy of research contributions to science, and to the preservation of indigenous biocultural knowledge in Australia, will live on. Her contributions to the Australian community have been enormous, and are an inspiration to all.