longgrass en · NOUN
Etymology
From long + grass.
Meanings
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(uncountable) Grasses that have been allowed to grow very high or that are from a species that grows very high.
He had finished long hours of grueling exercise cutting longgrass by hand.
2003, M. Daily, The Seed, →ISBN, page 64: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.
1947, Farming in South Africa - Volume 22, page 290:She found him lying in the longgrass of the meadow, staring at the night sky filled with the flickering brightness of ten thousand souls.
2006, Jayel Gibson, The Wrekening: An Ancient Mirrors Tale, →ISBN, page 423:
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(colloquial, uncountable) An area around Darwin, Australia populated by homeless indigenous people.
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.
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: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.
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: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, Amy Horton-Newell, Lawyers working to end homelessness: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, Emma Esther Kowal, The proximate advocate: improving indigenous health on the postcolonial frontier (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Melbourne), page 10: