Hi, "Stick to standard definitions and they were not." Who defines the standard definition?

My Grandfather was a farmer (actually called a grazier), a sheep farmer in the central west of NSW. He was also a hunter/gatherer, hunted rabbits, pigs and done a bit of gathering, yabbies, fishing, blackberries. Just as we ate the occasional sheep we also ate the rabbits etc. Predominately the Grandfather was a farmer or grazier, although strictly speaking he didn't till the soil as in some narrow definitions of farming, unless you count the home veggie garden, then he was a tiller of the soil.

No, there is no problem with Aboriginal people being defined as hunter/gatherers, and some were no more than that, but as some went beyond the hunter/gather stage of development, rudimentary as it was, it reasonable to tag them a little differently.

Close to the first European settlement, the local people had well established yam gardens; "Captain John Hunter, captain on the First Fleet reported in 1788 that the people around Sydney were dependent on their yam gardens." Hunter referred to "yam gardens", as a learned man Hunter knew the difference between a garden and simply gathering yams.

Joe, what do you think Hunter meant by the word "garden"?

Hi Pul,

Yes, that's right - as Marx would point out, as economies develop, they incorporate many of the innovations of previous forms of economic activity. Asian peasant farmers are all of those. So yes, farmers are quite likely to - at least in some societies - have a herd of sheep or llamas or gnus, and also, in their off-time, go roo-shooting or fishing, perhaps even planting the odd fruit-trees.

So your grandfather was, technically, a pastoralist ? He had taken out a pastoral lease ? So he would have had strict conditions on his right to cultivate any land, probably only a couple of acres for personal consumption, not for any commercial purposes.

I have no idea of what Hunter might have meant by '"yam gardens".

Is that it - that someone described the land use of the local Aboriginal people as "gardens" ? So whitefellas were quite amenable to Aboriginal people being into agriculture ? They didn't try to repress the idea or destroy any evidence of agricultural activities ? Good to you.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Joe, that's not it, there are hundreds of examples of Aboriginal farming in Bruce Pascoe's book 'Dark Emu' but you have not read it, and I am restricted to 350 words, I'll put up one other example to make the point.

Charles Sievwright circa 1840, observation, Sievwright tried to introduce the Aboriginal people at his Lake Keilamhere Protectorate to the English ploughing technique. The locals rejected the plough, and returned to cross slope hoeing, breaking down the larger clods of soil to prevent erosion which certainly would have resulted from the English style ploughing. Aboriginal people had been cultivating the land in this fashion for thousands of years.

Why would Sievwright try to introduce the plough to hunter gatherers? what was he thinking, maybe he expected them to plough up some wombats or something.

Joe, just on that "garden" in 1788, I have seen the recreation at Sydney's Botanic Gardens of Phillips pathetic attempt to establish a Government Garden in 1788, and Phillip did refer to it as a "garden". What the Europeans created was very much an English style vegetable garden in beds and rows, much like many backyard vegetable gardens of today. maybe that gives us an insight to what Hunter thought a garden should be. Unfortunately the Europeans were not very good farmers/gardeners and the resultant output was poor, the corn shrivelled up to nothing, and the cows ran away. Oddly the new arrivals, whilst in a very productive food bowl for the local Aboriginals, nearly starved to death in the first couple of years of the colony. What a bunch of dumb clucks, should have learnt some farming, or at least some hunting gathering skills from the locals!

@Paul1405,

In regard to the one instance you cite of something appearing to be soil tilling. Can you also provide details from the same record showing what the Aborigines planted in the prepared soil and the origin of the seed or seedlings for their 'crop.' I mean, where did they collect, how did they store etc.

And who worked out breaking down larger clods to prevent erosion was what was happening? Even stone-age people knew that to prepare any sort of soil you had to break down larger clods. Indeed, one would have thought larger lumps of dirt would hinder erosion.

I have read Pascoe and it is fantasy and fabrication. He is after all a fiction writer with I gather, some time spent teaching although not qualified as a teacher. Neither does he have any qualifications in history, anthropology, sociology or archaeology. In other words, a fiction writer taking remnants of fact and inflating and expanding them. That is how he reads to me.

@Paul1405,

Yes the British struggled to farm in the strange environment. But they also learned quickly and within years were feeding themselves in ways barely imagined by Aboriginal peoples.

Of course they hunted and gathered. My father and uncles were still trapping rabbits and shooting kangaroos to supplement the table in the 1950's. Everyone did hunting and gathering. The more evolved peoples however learned to farm and provide consistent and reliable food sources.

All primitive peoples did yam fields - hardly gardens, hardly farming. Dead easy really.