Paul,

Yes indeed, the great majority of convicts - the ones doing all the actual physical work - would have been unskilled labourers, and more likely unemployed labourers at that, navvies at best. They weren't land-owners, and (at least my mob) had been driven off the land. So they had no land-oriented skills. Neither were they fishermen. So no, they certainly weren't horticulturalists.

And it sounds as if neither were the local Aboriginal groups.

Why do people think it was piss-easy to flip from foraging to farming ? Surely, a moment's thought would convince people that you need a year's harvest, if not two (to ensure against a bad season) behind you to venture to spend your days, many, many days, digging with a stick in the expectation that you can plant Foxy's kangaroo-grass and reap (at least, the women could reap) a vast crop of 100 kg to the hectare of tiny grass-seed.

So there would have to have been a sort of exchange of labour-time (from Marx's point of view) from that spent foraging to that spent preparing, planting, weeding, maybe watering, harvesting. With piddly yields and the risks involved, it would have made far more sense to go foraging. Which, of course, is why foragers tended to stay as foragers. They're not stupid.

Joe

@Loudmouth,

Having lived so many years in Third World countries, I have often been reminded of how reluctant people are to change unless they can see immediate and valuable benefits.

For example, one would think that the gift of a water pump would be treasured but not so. Africa is littered with the broken remains of such pumps which well-intentioned foreigners have paid to install.

Why has it not worked?

1. women collect water and there is little interest in relieving their toil.
2. chiefs control everything and steal parts for their own personal water pump.
3. people are not trained or do not wish to train to repair them and, after all, who would pay for the parts required to repair them? I gather there is a new scheme to repair pumps, paid for by yet more well-intentioned foreigners.

And so it goes. Aboriginal peoples quickly worked out iron axes were better than stone - not hard, except when it connected with the heads of females which was constant; glass made better, and much easier spear tips than chipped stone; flour actually made decent bread as opposed to ground seeds mixed with a bit of water and tossed on the fire; hunting sheep and cattle was dead easy compared to wild game, etc. etc. etc.

Humans are nothing if not self-serving. And then those well-intentioned British set up ration depots to provide free food; provided shelter and medical care where needed; and ultimately money, 'sit down money' as it was dubbed where you got paid for doing nothing.

They were not and are not stupid and the same problems exist throughout the Third World where billions are poured into solving problems which are never solved and corruption breeds like rabbits.

rhross/Joe, you question Bruce Pascoe's credentials, yet the man is an acclaimed award winning writer. How do your qualifications stack up in comparison. I find his book 'Dark Emu' informative, where much of what you say is speculative, example "100 kg to the hectare" where did that figure come from, or did you simply make it up?

rhross "I have read Pascoe and it is fantasy and fabrication", Your opinion, and you are not being asked to accept what Pascoe is saying, but he has made a reasonable effort to provide first hand accounts from early European explorers and others for what is in his book.

Like all of us on the forum, you display a certain bias when discussing a topic, and that's what the forum is about.

Paul,

Yes, I made it up :) . Are you suggesting that the mystery wonder-grain that was grown all over Australia is actually kangaroo-grass ? Why keep us in suspense like this ?!

From your experience of New Zealand, where (at least in the North Island) the Maori people were farmers, cultivators, diggers (they hadn't caught up with the Aboriginal innovation of no-drill seeding) and builders of villages and pas, you would be aware that, in the early days, no whitefellas could just push people off their land: they fought like buggery to hang onto it. Eventually it had to be tricked out of people, or seized on the pretext of defending the British presence. Isn't it still the case that many Maori, wherever they are, knock up a garden wherever they're living ? Probably even here in Australia ? Hmmmmm ...... maybe someone should tell them the wonder-benefits of kangaroo-grass.

Would there be Maori cultivating technology in museums, not to mention on maraes ? i.e. plenty of evidence that Maori were and are farmers ? Yes, of course, they were also fishermen (cf the Whakatane story) and eel-hunters. No doubt they built stone-works to trap eels and other fish ? That's how it works in history - that when people adopt a novel way of providing an economic surplus, they usually keep fresh their knowledge, and practice, of earlier forms of economic life. So many farmers here would also occasionally go out and shoot a kangaroo, or drop a line into the nearest water-hole or creek. But that doesn't mean that shooting or fishing are integral components of farming.

Although I'm from NSW and have lived in the NT and Victoria, I'm still no more than a South Australian, and a southern one at that, so

[TBC]

[continued]

so I know very little about anything that might have conceivably been called Aboriginal 'farming', historically or up to the present day. Old people at my wife's mission used to talk about the fruit trees that had been planted during Mission times, but which had almost all died because no-one watered them. One pear tree is still going, it gets the run-off from a large shed, and provides a huge crop, which no-one eats. But my experience is obviously very limited, so that can't really be taken as evidence.

Joe

@Paul1405,

My assessment of Pascoe is sourced in:

Forty years as a journalist, editor,book reviewer and manuscript editor.

Extensive research into history in general and Australian history in particular as well as extensive reading of archaeology, anthropology, sociology and the human condition.

All mixed in with a great deal of scepticism and common sense.

Being an 'award winning writer' does not mean one is a good writer or that one has written a book of any value or substance.

A woman called Marlo Morgan wrote a book about Aborigines where she talked about them using camel hooves as instruments, when, as I am sure you know, the soft-padded camel has no hoof. Her book was a top seller and she was generally acclaimed.

In this age of politically correct writing it is very easy to win awards and indeed be published, if you present the 'correct' agenda, as Pascoe does with his explorations of poetic licence regarding Aboriginal peoples.