grass-tree

They spread out like the top of the grass-tree, and the fruit has a large kernel about the size of an egg, with a hard shell; the inside has the taste of a cocoa-nut, but when roasted is like a potato.

The Journals of John McDouall Stuart 2007

The high bluff and craggy hills, whose tops we had formerly seen, stood out now in bold relief, with a low level tract of country stretching to their base, covered with dwarf brush, heathy plants and grass-tree, with many intervals of open grassy land, and abounding in kangaroos.

Journals of expeditions of discovery into Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the years 1840-1 2004

I passed over steep ridges, densely covered with large tea-trees or with other scrub, after which I emerged upon open sandy downs, covered with low shrubs or bushes, and frequently having patches of good grass interspersed; the grass-tree was here met with for the first time, but not very abundantly.

Journals of expeditions of discovery into Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the years 1840-1 2004

Wylie went out to search for food, but got nothing, whilst I unharnessed and attended to the horses, which were a good deal fagged, and then prepared the camp and made the fires for the night: I could get nothing but grass-tree for this purpose, but it was both abundant and dry.

Journals of expeditions of discovery into Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the years 1840-1 2004

A weapon intermediate between the “Jin-dagi” and the full-length spear of manhood is the scape of the grass-tree

My Tropic Isle 2003

Where the grass-tree grows plentifully the long, slender leaves are snapped off into about six-inch lengths and are used similarly to the creeping palm darts and with like accuracy.

My Tropic Isle 2003

Our equipment for sport consisted of a tomahawk and a grass-tree spear so frail that any of the mullet could have swum off with it without inconvenience.

My Tropic Isle 2003

* The numbers seen by us were indeed incredible; the stem of every grass-tree (xanthorrhoea) which plant grows abundantly upon the hills, was covered with them, and on their taking wing the air appeared, as it were, in perfect motion.

Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 — Volume 1 Phillip Parker King

Next she plaited fishing lines from grass-tree fibre, and fashioned hooks from the bones of slaughtered birds and animals, to catch the fish which abounded near the rocks.

Adventures in Southern Seas A Tale of the Sixteenth Century George Forbes

'You'll never sleep on a sweeter bed,' he said, sniffing the resinous fragrance of the grass-tree tops.

Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land 1915