Debra Jopson

Sydney Morning Herald

In the first two years of study toward her masters' degree, Jennifer Symonds from suburban Wollstonecraft, earned the right to carry a woven pandanus dilly bag and a digging stick adorned with yams painted in ochre.

The next year, she was allowed to wear a cockatoo-feather headdress, a string chest band and a grass skirt. After four years, she wore them to dance for her traditional graduation at a ceremonial ground on Elcho Island, her face and chest painted in red, yellow and white ochres, the local equivalent of a paper degree.

Ms Symonds, 53, is one of the first 18 people in the world to graduate with an Australian masters of indigenous knowledge through this ceremony. While she camped in the bush, she learnt the story of the two sisters who helped to create Arnhem Land.

But she missed one cross-cultural experience.

"There's a mangrove worm that the Yolngu people love to eat and that didn't appeal to me. I haven't tried it. One of the women did and went green. They look 10 times worse than witchetty grub," she said.

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