They were able to 1) grow grain and yams in fields 2) walk to the kangaroo and goanna patch. Today some S Aust farmers can 1) live in a house and 2) go on holiday. You may have observed city people leave houses each morning and "commute" or even travel to Port Pirie.
Sturt sketched houses he saw such as at Strzelecki Creek 1845 at 14 metres wide and 2 metres high with clay plaster on roof.

I have given facts and references as you asked. They are no good to you.

Hi Nick,

So what happened after ? Did people keep building such structures, right up to the present ? Houses nearly fifty feet wide, held up by ?desert mallee posts with enough room for people to walk upright ? That's something that all the archaeologists and anthropologists since Sturt have missed. And out in the Strzelecki Desert ? Why, although who are we to ask ? Aren't people amazing ?

Why do people believe the most outlandish stories ?

Joe

Archaeologists see the remains of houses, storage bins and the outlandish reports of many British explorers, officers and pastoralists. Like you they refuse to comprehend what they know.

Hi Nick,

Oy. If people have to travel about in search of food, not necessarily every day but regularly, even in the best environments, then they are not going to build permanent structures. In less favourable environments, it is even less likely. In environments where people have to move about every single day, it is very unlikely. Strzelecki Creek, righto.

If grass seed is available although of low calorific value, the women may not want to move but man does not live by kangaroo grass alone, one needs protein from animals, and if the animals are getting scarce and moving away, then one must follow them. Who carries stuff in foraging societies ? The women: kids, grinding stones, etc. An extra ten or twenty kilo is a lot to lump around, and for no particular reason if the seed is available wherever one goes.

Has any systematic anthropological study been done anywhere to verify that storing food actually happens or habitually happened until recently ? Foragers usually consume food on the spot, that day, they don't keep anything much for tomorrow, except perhaps a bit of damper. That goes along with the boom-bust, starve-gorge cycle of people in foraging societies. If it's there, consume it; if not, starve. Good times, bad times.

Just by the way, even if there were such artifacts as storage pits in Australia somewhere, it would not mean that anybody has deliberately cultivated some sort of crop, merely that stuff has been harvested and stored.

Joe

"merely that stuff has been harvested and stored."
well, that's progress at least for you Joe.
hooray ,leave it there.

Hi Nick,

Just a couple of points for the unwary: you mentioned Lake Blanche, up on the Strzelecki Track. It's a salt lake, in a desert: plenty of bird life when it's got water, pretty useless otherwise.

The most productive environments in pre-contact Australia were the river valleys. Along the banks of the lower Murray and Lakes were more than a hundred camping sites. Some were fairly permanent, although people were liable to pack up and move somewhere else on a whim, or out of boredom with the same old food - not bloody duck again ! - or to spend time with the in-laws. People built wurlies, ('pulgis') out of branches and leaves, often with seaweed as well when it was around. They were, it seems, usually less than 1.5 metres in maximum height, and less than 3 metres across. A dozen people could squeeze in there, plus a few drying bodies, and their dogs. They often burnt down. No worries: build another one. Or go somewhere else, we're sick of the bloody neighbours anyway. Even if it 's my own brother.

In foraging societies, people don't waste superfluous energy. Even now. If you can get by with a 2-metre-wide pulgi, you do. Eat if it's there, go without if it's not. The Rev. Taplin called it an 'Epicurean' life. On Coranderrk in Victoria, the missionary learnt not to give out the week's allowance of 7 lb of meat on the one day, it would all get eaten on that one day, but to give it out daily. Taplin found the same with the tobacco issue, the old blokes would smoke the week's allowance of 2 ounces all on the same day, then get their wives'. He worried incessantly about respiratory troubles, especially TB.

Fascinating !

Joe