An overland telegraph can't work , the power is too weak at the far end. Actually the wire is a lightning conductor to protect camels before the Royal Flying Vet did Medicare bulk billing.

Read the book. White man talk with forked tongue , with mattock, crowbar and shovel.

Dear Loudmouth,

What are we going to do with you old son?

Faced with words direct from the explorer's pen you are so keen to neutralise them that you are now trying to say that there must be some other reason for the Aborigines to have created these hay ricks. Why, because there was no way it could have been they wanted to harvest them and collect the grain since it doesn't fit your narrative.

Well what other bloody reason do you think they put all that time and effort into producing mile after mile of reaped hay? Was it just because they wanted the exercise?

Get real.

You ask “Why are some people so eager to deny that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers?”. They don't deny it at all. The way they managed their resources meant they could have lived quite happily off hunting and gathering. It really is a very fine existence for the most part and the early explorers often remarked how fit, healthy, intelligent and happy they seemed compared to virtually all classes of Englishmen. It left plenty of time for ceremony and spirituality. That of course wasn't to last.

Pascoe says he had always accepted the hunter gatherer label on Aborigines until he started reading the explorers account. It then became patently obvious that was not the full story.

So the question really is why are you at such pains to dismiss with prejudice the notion they farmed? I think your ideological slip is showing.

Steele,

I just love the "Well, how else do you explain ..... ?!" arguments, they are usually the conclusions of the feeble-minded.

Ask yourself (or get someone to explain it to you): stacking 'hay' (are we talking about kangaroo grass, which grows all over the country and has no nutritional value ?) does not necessarily mean it has been grown from cultivating the soil. It simply means 'gathering the 'hay' into piles'. However you cut it, however big the piles of 'hay', that's 'gathering', without the in-between steps of cultivating the soil, fencing off the valuable crop, and weeding it - and claiming the piece of land as one's private property (as Marx and Engels would assert). i.e. 'farming'.

'Gathering' is not 'farming', Steele. Piling may be one form of temporary gathering and 'storing' and subsequent transporting to camp for winnowing and grinding the seed for damper. Or, as you might call it, bread. That's what gatherers do.

Gathering as done all over the world ten-fifteen thousand years ago. Farming was initiated in very few places in the world, maybe in only four or five. It was an enormously rare and important human innovation, probably done many, many times and lost before it 'stuck' - and probably done by women.

So what's so wrong with hunting and gathering that it has to be so ferociously denied in the case of Australia ?

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

You wrote;

“I just love the "Well, how else do you explain ..... ?!" arguments, they are usually the conclusions of the feeble-minded.”

Don't be an idiot. No, this is usually referenced when people try and assign a supernatural explanation to something. That is certainly not the case here, rather Pascoe related a direct observation from an early explorer and you have sought to dismiss it. All I have said is you need reasonable grounds to do so as in a strong alternative which you have failed to furnish. That's it.

As to kangaroo grass having no nutritional value what a crock. So again why on earth did aborigines even bother to gather the seeds if that was the case. It is actually very palatable to cattle, can deliver protein values exceeding 10%, but it is acknowledged that the more nutritious varieties have likely been grazed out over time leaving the less productive ones to propagate.

The vast tracts of open country in Western Victoria were there because of a regime of firestick farming practised by tribes through the area. This not only dealt with weeds but served to domesticate grain species.

There is plenty of evidence from the likes of RG Kimber that Central Australia Aboriginals “engaged in seed propagation, irrigation, harvest, storage and trade of seed”.

Is it your contention that because they didn't fence the crops they don't qualify as being engaged in 'farming'?

Why is it such a big thing to you to state that they weren't anyway? It just seems so bloody minded.

SR,

Well, I tried. I'm too old to waste my time on people with pre-conceived notions, and no incontrovertible evidence to back them up. See you.

Joe

"Have you not read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe? "
Borrow the book from the library if you must and come back and tell me why he is wrong."

"Hi Steele,
I suggest you try and find Peter Bellwood's "First Farmers"."

interesting...