I heard a fellow called Bruce Pascoe being interviewed by Richard Fidler. He is an historian and his field of study is how Aboriginal Australians lived at the time Of the British colonisation. At school we were taught that native people were simple hunter gatherers who chased kangaroos and were essentially nomadic.
Apparently, that is far from the reality. Early explorers wrote about their encounters with various tribes and their society was much more complex than we have been told. Charles Sturt met a mob of hundreds near Coopers Creek where they had established a village of substantial houses and were harvesting grain, probably millet. Sturt talks about being fed roast duck and the best 'cake' they had ever tasted.
Other explorers report coming across vast fields of grain, haystacks and stores of harvested grain. On the coast, their fish traps are among the best engineered in the world. We know that the native people used fire to clear land but it's now clear it was for agriculture not just to round up kangaroos. They were a sophisticated agricultural society.
We've also had the wrong message about their housing. We can all remember the pictures of Aborigines standing on one leg in front of their wurly: a simple sheet of bark leaning against a tree. But there is evidence right across Australia of solid houses built of interleaved sticks covered with clay. In Tasmania, there were even houses with frameworks of whalebone!
As you can see, I was enthused by the interview and by reading his book, Dark Emu, Black Seeds. I think Australia needs to take a long hard look at the extraordinary society we supplanted and start to give some credit for the way they lived in harmony with the environment, and with each other.
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