Yes, people on the TS Islands farmed the land, cleared it, cultivated it, dug it, planted it, weeded it
Loudmouth,
Yes, there's ample recorderd evidence of that. Sadly though, since the colonisation of the TS islands by mainly Samoans during the early Beche de Mer & Pearl Shelling days, this no longer happens particularly in the past 40 years when the Govt sponsored Supermarkets have taken over from the gardens.
The actual native TS Islander population is just about outnumbered now.

Hi Individual,

And my bet is that anybody could find ample evidence of farming even on the islands on which the farming was abandoned earliest - stone boundary-markers perhaps stretching out into the sea, remnant plants which have gone feral, grounds where plant-food was processed.

The problem seems to be that there is none of that on the mainland (except at the tip of Cape York). Perhaps archaeologists will one day find evidence of Aboriginal fence-lines, storage-pits, farming tools, etc. I wait for the truth with bated breath.

One problem with that rare transition from foraging to farming is that you have to wait for so long before you can reap a crop. Which might fail. Or the animals get into it. And of course, you have to put the hard work in, in the meantime, with workable tools. You have to be pretty sure that it will all be worth it, rather than say, "bugger it, I'm going out hunting and gathering today".

And of course, it wasn't just a one-leap effort from one to the other: in the Middle East, it may have involved pasturing animals while also foraging, feeding those animals, keeping them in pens for their meat, then for their hair or wool for clothing (i.e. keeping them alive), then the importance of finding the best grain for one's animals, and (most likely by women, the animals' carers) accidentally realising that sprinkled grain grew to maturity, then deliberately planting that sort of grain around the hut or village, then the men taking up the idea. i.e. many steps.

But here, no domesticable animals. No desperate need for clothing. No plantable grain. In fact, one thing with very elementary technology is that foragers can't put much of a dent in animal populations, or their freedom to graze wherever they liked. So there's never any shortage of food, if only one can get it (except in bad droughts which hit man and beast equally). So no point to penning animals, they're everywhere. So no association between seed and growing grain. Etc. Etc.

Joe

Prof. Marcia Langton writing in The Australian
tells us that:

" Dark Emu is is a profound challenge to conventional
thinking about Aboriginal life on the continent.
Bruce Pascoe details the Aboriginal economy and
analyses the historical data showing that our societies
were not simple hunter-gatherer economies but sophisticated,
with farming and irrigation practices. This is the most
important book on Australia and should be read by every
Australian."

Stephen Fitzpatrick, The Australian, writes:

"The truth-telling must go on."

" ...Dark Emu is essential reading, for anyone who wants to
understand what Australia once was..."

Judges, NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

And the comments go on.

Then we have the book by Bill Gammage, "The Biggest
Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia."
Historian Professor Bill Gammage argues the First
Australians worked a complex system of land management
and explodes the myth that pre-settlement Australia
was an tamed wilderness revealing the complex country-wide
systems of land management used by Aboriginal people.

The truth does exist for those interested in finding
it.

Foxy,

Yes, indeed, the truth-telling must go on, as must critical assessment of each and every claim. I hope it never stops. Well, it can't, except under fascism.

This might give an indication to how slow and difficult it was for farming to spread across Europe:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5949/137

Joe

stone boundary-markers perhaps stretching out into the sea,
Loudmouth,
That's the first time I've heard of boundary markers out from the beach. I know of those miles' long stone fish traps which I have been led to believe were communal. Whoever built those did a mammoth task. It must have taken many, generations ! We'll never get to see such effort again.