Older than the pyramids, the Acropolis, Stonehenge -
Budj Bim has been added to the World Heritage List.
The Victorian site is the first in Australia to
receive protection solely for its Aboriginal
cultural importance.

The site features the remnants of about 300 round
stone huts challenging the common perception that
all Aboriginal people were nomadic.

There's more to read at:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/07/budj-bim-indigenous-eel-trap-site-added-to-world-heritage-list

"Perhaps now we shall be able to look at the evidence presented
to us that Aboriginal people did build houses, did build
dams, did sow, irrigate and till the land, did alter the
course of rivers, and much more. Then it is likely that
we shall admire and love our land all the more."
Bruce Pascoe.

Your thoughts please.

The area of mainland Australia is 7,659,861 sq km and 300 huts prove what?

Thanks Foxy, your post will bring out the forums band of 'Deniers', I see the first one has popped in already. Their fear is not stone huts, but recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty.

On the topic itself, Budj Bim is truly remarkable, and its listing as a world heritage site is well deserved. This is by far the oldest existing example of human activity ever uncovered, five or six times older than all those you for-mentioned. Your hope that "Perhaps now we shall be able to look at the evidence presented" maybe a forlorn hope, as fear and the reliance on the concept of terra nullius takes over again.

Foxy,

A single does not a summer make.

Not all aboriginal communities were nomadic, but the vast majority were.

Foxy thanks for an interesting thread
I have been aware for decades about this and interested
My childhood more often than not saw eels as the only fish available and we sure had them on our table often
Worldwide they are seen as much wanted food, not here however
Still fish for them smoking some and just cooking others
Our first people, saw the blind snob like taunt, lived in this harsh country very well, not just eels but many food sources we could not use if left in the out back
WHY would anyone be offended by the understanding, like all post caveman humanity, our first nation farmed?

Such work could have been done by pre-Aborigine people ! Why else would there be no follow-up structures over the generations ?

Shadow, the tribes in the Sydney region, extending well to the south and north, when Phillip arrived were not nomadic as you put it, but a settled people. Your school boy image of Aboriginals wandering the harsh desert reaches of Central Australia are out of touch with the reality.

It's called trapping, an advanced form of foraging. People have ingeniously been doing this all over the world, perhaps for tens of thousands of years. Ngarrindjeri people used to build fish traps around the southern lakes, for instance.

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

There is pretty good evidence this was far more akin to herding than just trapping including separation into ages and year round holding of live eels.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Nomadic? What do you mean by the term? At least here in Victoria there is little evidence of wide ranging movement with very strongly defined tribal boundaries. There is plenty of evidence of neighbouring tribes being invited to share in a particular bounty but there was a lot of protocol surrounding such invitations.

The coastal peoples did move with seasonal variations just like today with people packing up to go the 'temporary shelter' of a tent or a caravan on the coast to take advantage of cooler temperatures and fishing.

Where those opportunities didn't exist like along the Murray they tended to be much bigger, more settled communities taking advantage of large food resources.

Just like in the larges towns within Medieval Europe health outcomes did suffer in larger settlements. The first explorers spoke of how healthy and physically impressive the coastal people were.

There's no argument that the indigenous copped crap by having their food-bearing areas trampled over first by the British settlers, followed by others.
Somehow, I think the Aborigines themselves displaced earlier people here.
Other people have gone down but then rose again but there's no such evidence here. There must have been others before them who did all the cave paintings etc.

Not only does Budj Bim bust the myth that all
Indigenous people were nomadic and not
agriculturally inclined - it's also considered
one of the oldest aquaculture sites in the
world.

This aquaculture system,
was created 6,600 years ago
by the Gunditjmara people who used stones
to build an elaborate series of channels and pools
to harvest eels from Lake Condah.

There's not many things on the
planet that still exist today that are older
than that.

The listing ends a 17 year campaign for
recognition. It has been added to the
UNESCO World Heritage site list.

This will bring recognition of
Gunditjimara people's achievements on a
global scale. It will provide increased
protection of the site, and of course the tourism
boost.

The State government has announced $8 million for
a Visitor Centre and major works at the site for
an expected visitor influx.

Big Congratulations!
To all the people who worked
so hard for so many years to achieve this recognition.
Australians all, owe them a debt of gratitude.

Exciting Times Ahead.

Paul,

While I happily acknowledge that the teachings of 50 years ago was biased to depict aboriginals as ignorant savages, similarly I hold a healthy scepticism of inherently partial researchers that are largely unsupported by archaeological evidence.

SM,

Well, You've now got the evidence and it's been
recognised globally.

Foxy,

To quote:

"The site was created about 6,600 years ago by the Gunditjmara people and is considered one of the world’s oldest freshwater aquaculture systems.

The site features the remnants of about 300 round stone huts that are the only remaining permanent houses built by an indigenous community in Australia – challenging the common perception that all Aboriginal people were nomadic."

So over the past 10 millenia there is only one site where there is any evidence of permanent settlement and that was nearly 7000 years ago. Given that the aboriginal population at the point of settlement was estimated to be up to 4 million, if they were not nomadic, where where their permanent settlements?

SM,

Bruce Pascoe in this book, "Dark Emu,"
tells us that:

"New examples are being discovered all the time.
Archaeologists are currently examining a
complex village site in "Australia's dead heart"
where the people had a complex water-management
system, sophisticated housing, stone quarries,
and seed-grinding and storage arrangements."

"This is a major cultural site where people employed
engineering to manage the environment. It has the
potential together with the examination of the hundreds
of similar sites around the country, to provide a
very different picture of Australia's social,
economic, and cultural history."

All one has to do is have a genuine interest in the
Australian past which will provide a rich vein
of knowledge that will inform.

I strongly recommend your getting hold of the book
"Dark Emu,"by Bruce Pascoe. It's a real eye-opener.

I'd like to know how they established the age of the site !

The fish traps at some of the Torres Strait islands are of immense proportion, they go for miles, literally ! I have wondered if the very heavy stones were taken there by raft ? I have the feeling that these structures pre-date the recent/precent inhabitants' cultures !
If they're thousands of years old then why aren't there any hundreds of years old ones ?

I have a question for those not impressed with the evidence
How much remains of whitemans settlements from six thousand years ago
Why deny these traps and the homes around them existed
Do we need to tell ourselves these people had to be nomads, if so why

Dear Shadow Minister,

This is a piece from Stephen Webb's study titled INTENSIFICATION, POPULATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN SOUTHEASTERN AUSTRALIA: THE SKELETAL EVIDENCE. It was written in 1995.

Webb looked at the skeletal stress markers. Over 1,000 individuals were X-rayed for Harris lines and about 2,000 surveyed for dental hypoplasia and cribra orbitalia to give insight into pre-colonisation lifestyles.

“Comparing the frequency of cribra orbitalia in the Murray people with that for other populations from around the world we can see the group is subjected to larger amounts of this type of stress than is usual for hunter-gatherer communities. The frequencies rank with some of the highest amounts anywhere. In fact, frequencies of cribra orbitalia comparable to those of the Murray are rarely, if ever, found in huntergatherer groups and resemble those in people who have taken up a more sedentary lifestyle. This is illustrated clearly in Figure 7. In three groups of Indian remains representing hunter-gatherers (Late Woodland), transitional hunter-gatherer/agriculturalists (Mississippian Acculturated Late Woodland) and agriculturalists (Middle Mississippian) there is a steady increase in the frequency of anaemia both in juveniles and adults. Increases in anaemia have, therefore, been seen to coincide with increasing sedentism. The clustering of people into large groups and extended family situations; a general increase in population, and the lowering of sanitary standards are all features of increasing sedentism. From the above data it seems that the human ecology of the Murray shows similar characteristics, providing a catalyst for the growth and maintenance of large helminth populations. Moreover, even in an area providing a rich biomass the existence of large numbers of people could produce such intense exploitation that nutritional inadequacy might arise with comparatively small fluctuations in seasonal abundances and river levels. This would compound any pathological circumstances similar to those outlined above.”

Does this help?

There appears to be so many questions being asked
which is such a good thing . It shows people are
interested. Perhaps now people will take the time
and make the effort to actually get the answers and
learn something new. Learn what we were not taught
about our Indigenous people, and their culture, and fill
in the gaps for ourselves.

With that in mind -

Prof. Marcia Langton's book, "Welcome to Country,"
will help towards this end.
I gave copies of this to some of my family members
last Christmas.

It's
a fantastic book for those who want to know more
about our rich Indigenous history, people, culture,
and places of interest to visit. It's a
travel guide, but much more than that.

Anyone interested in learning more about where to go
and what to see - its worth getting hold of this
informative work.

Belly,
I haven't actually heard of white people of 6000 years ago. They reckon they found 4000 year old remains of pole houses in Lake Hallstatt but they were Slavic or Celt I believe.
I think Australian human habitation goes back way beyond the Aborigines.

Just wait for the new Aboriginal legends to get dreamed up on the SBS. The ones about fish traps.

It is rather sad that we were taught so much about
the ancient civilisations that came before us but
little was taught about the breadth of history
on our own doorstep. In fact not only were our own
ancient sites unknown but were actively destroyed.

And we know wonder why there's so few remaining?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-21/brooke-boney-road-back-home-cultural-preservation-in-australia/9269956

Individual,

Artifacts in Kakadu national park have been dated
between 65,000 and 80,000 years old extending the
likely occupation of the area by thousands of
years.

There's more at the following link:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/dig-finds-evidence-of-aboriginal-habitation-up-to-80000-years-ago

I hope this helps.

SR, Foxy, Paul, et Al,

I have no doubt that over the milenia that of the many millions of people that lived in Aus managed to achieve many things. What is lacking from all of this is any indication that these advances were anything more than flashes in the pan that did not survive any appreciable length of time.

Belly,

"Why deny these traps and the homes around them existed
Do we need to tell ourselves these people had to be nomads, if so why?"

No one denies the existence of the fish traps and huts, where did you get that idea?

Reason alone tells us that the majority were nomads.

SM,

Flashes in the pan that did not survive?

Archaeologists would not agree with you.
Artifacts are being found that have indeed
survived the tests of time.

And we have notable achievers whose legacies
are still valued today, and many who are still contributing
and valued.

I won't mention all the politicians, athletes, sports
people, professors, Australians of the Year, artists,
song-writers, musicians, actors, comedians, writers.
Who were more than just flashes in the pan.

My personal favourite is - Shirley Colleen Smith
(1924-1998) better known as Mum Shirl. A prominent
Wiradjuri woman, social worker and humanitarian.

Her remarkable work included helping set up services like
the Aboriginal Legal Service, Medical Service, Housing Company,
the Tent Embassy and the Aboriginal Children's Services.

These services still contribute to Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander welfare in NSW and have inspired similar
ones around the country.

Is Mise,

Evidence tells us otherwise.

“People got here much earlier than we thought, which means of course they must also have left Africa much earlier to have traveled on their long journey through Asia and south-east Asia to Australia,” said the lead author, Associate Prof Chris Clarkson, from the University of Queensland.

Individual,

And they had to come along the coast of PNG to get to Australia, so clearly people got to PNG before they got to Australia.

And they had to come down the Malay Peninsula to get to PNG, so clearly people were in Malaya before they were in PNG.

And so on and so on.

We're all Africans, who have been in Africa longer than anybody else has been anywhere. The ancestors of Aboriginal people here are Africans, Arabians, Indians, Malayans and Papua-New-Guineans. Since Australia was the last stop on the journey, Aboriginal people were almost the last people to get to where they are now.

Joe

Just reading is all the evidence we need to see some want to believe only nomads lived here
Yes we all came out of Africa
And if you give it honest thought we too, once had to be nomads or we would still be in Africa

Belly, 'Yes, we're all Africans'. Europeans too. Chinese too. Everybody. That's what it means. And yes, we were all nomads, hunter-gatherers, 10-12,000 years ago.

In Australia, of course, in very productive areas, along major rivers, especially in the bends around rivers, Aboriginal people were more likely to set up permanent (or near-permanent) camps, building more solid foundations (wind-breaks) for their wurlies. And from there, they hunted, fished and gathered food. In such circumstances, they would not have had any need to cultivate the soil and grow crops, even if such plants had been available.

Joe

Artifacts in Kakadu national park have been dated
between 65,000 and 80,000 years
Reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a tour bus driver.
He told me he was one of the Main roads crew who found some old cave paintings in the mid 50's. When he went back some 30 years later he was amazed how many more 40,000 year old paintings there were.

Dear individual,

Nah. Didn't happen.

What were the crops that Aboriginals cultivated?

Is Mise,

And could they be cultivated today ? Wouldn't it be handy to know what they were ? And also the animals which were domesticated ? Would eels count ?

Joe

Dear Is Mise,

i will take that as a legitimate question.

Here in SW Victoria a principle crop was murnong. It is a yam daisy.

It once stretched as far as the eye could see and sustained the local tribes when other sources of food were scarce. The early explorers talked of fields of yellow that went for tens of miles. It was almost completely wiped out with the introduction of thousands of sheep which were transported across from Tasmania. They loved it and eat their way from Geelong to Colac over the course of two years.

The early accounts of women collecting the tubers abound. Woven baskets full of murnong were placed on fires.

http://tuckerbush.com.au/murnong-yam-daisy-microseris-lanceolata/

There are normally three parts to the tuberous roots. Traditionally they were called the daughter, the mother, and the grandmother with the mother being the largest.

From memory the mother was harvested and the murnong replanted. By the next harvest the stores of the grandmother allowed the daughter to grow and to regenerate all three again. In times of plenty the three were planted separately to extend the crop. From what little we are able to glean from the records it appeared there was a practice of enhancing what was already there.

Thus firestick management was apparently only part of the equation.

Hi Belly, the deniers have an agenda, as I said earlier it has to do with recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty. They want us to believe Aboriginals were a transient people not long in any particular location, therefore never obtaining "ownership" or any kind.

The instances of past nomadic lifestyles is associated with people whose major food source, and many other necessities were derived from herds of migratory animals. People like the Plains Indians of North America whose nomadic life was necessitated by the migratory habits of the great buffalo herds. The majority of Indian tribes were not nomadic, but settled in a particular location. Australia had no great migratory herds, so there was no great movement of people.

There never was a great migratory push into Australia by people from somewhere else. Gradually over many thousands of years, from a small nucleolus of migrants, the population grew and expanded. Its a fact when Phillip arrived all Aboriginals within a hundred miles of the European settlement were well established on lands with clearly defined boundaries. I would say the vast majority of Aboriginal people at the time of European colonisation were living in fairly bountiful locations around Australia, those living around Sydney Harbour are a good example, and they were living a fairly sedentary lifestyle.

Paul,

Steele has supplied valuable information on vegie cropping in Victoria, what was the principal crop around Sydney?

Issy, where did I say Aboriginals were growing crops around Sydney? So why are you asking me. One thing is for certain, Aboriginals were able to provide for their needs very easily, yet the dumb Europeans almost starved to death in the same environment. The white galahs boiled the pink galahs and tried to eat them.

Paul,

Are you suggesting that the only real nomads were those groups who followed herds of animals ? No other way for people to be called nomadic ? Only herders ? In Australia ? [Have you ever tried to follow a 'herd' of kangaroos ? Or Bruce Pascoe's cassowaries ?] No such thing as 'mere' hunters and gatherers anywhere ?

Steele,

Tens of miles of yam daisies ? Growing naturally, or are you claiming that women planted it all ?

It's very interesting that the odd planting may have been a sort of precursor to full-on horticulture in other parts of the world, such as PNG and SE Asia, something women may have done as a sort of game, while vast areas of the tubers were easily available. Agriculture (and horticulture as well) developed probably in many, many small steps like this, trial and error, and repetition over maybe hundreds of years or more.

Was this a very common activity involving many women ? Do you know how the tuber was prepared for eating ? How much time it took to prepare, for example, and how much nutrition did the tubers provide ?

Joe

Paul,

I thought that you might have an insight into agriculture in pre 1788 NSW, particularly the Sydney area.

I remember only too well collecting the edible plants that grow around the harbour, there are plenty of them but they are so tiny that it takes a day to collect enough for a slim meal,
Seaweed, shellfish and fish are much easier to obtain.

See:http://www.researchgate.net/publication/322664342_Aboriginal_uses_of_seaweeds_in_temperate_Australia_an_archival_assessment

Dear Shadow Minister,

You write;

“So over the past 10 millenia there is only one site where there is any evidence of permanent settlement and that was nearly 7000 years ago.”

No there were plenty but as archaeologist Elizabeth Williams explains they did not survive colonisation.

“Aboriginal society changed greatly as a result of contact with Europeans and while the construction of substantial huts persisted in certain areas until well into the contact period the use of Villages’ as a settlement form seems to have disappeared soon after first contact.”

This was an account from William Thomas relates one such destruction event;

“. . . by Mustons and the Scrubby Creek to the westward . . . first settlers found a regular aboriginal settlement. This settlement was about 50 miles NE of Port Fairy. There was on the banks of the creek between 20 and 30 huts of the form of a beehive or sugar loaf, some of them capable of holding a dozen people. These huts were about 6’ high or [a] little more, about 10’ in diameter, an opening about 3’6” high for a door which they closed at night if they required with a sheet of bark, an aperture at the top 8 or 9” to let out the smoke which in wet weather they covered with a sod. These buildings were all made of a circular form, closely worked and then covered with mud, they would bear the weight of a man on them without injury.

Cont..

Cont..

These blacks made various well constructed dams in the creek, which by certain heights acted as sluice gates at the flooding season . . . In 1840 a sheep station was formed on the opposite banks of the creek to this Aboriginal village or town. My informant who was a well educated man and a nephew to the Recorder of the City of London, though a shepherd at the time gave me a drawing he had taken of the village . . . These blacks used to live almost on fish, grubs and small animals and were perfectly harmless and stationary in 1841 or the end of 1840. My informant stated that the grass got bare or scarce on the side of the creek where the sheep station was, and one day while the Blacks were from their village, up the creek, seeking their daily fare, the white people set fire to and demolished the aboriginal settlement and it afterwards became the sheep farmers [?] ... What became of the blacks he would not tell but at the close of 1841 when he again went shepherding in that locality he could not trace a single hut along the whole creek.”

Dear Loudmouth,

Not sure I'm up for your usual deeply sceptical nonsense on these things but I will give it a fly.

Murnong is proving pretty hard to cultivate. I have tried a couple of times to no avail. Some of the introduced species like African weed orchids are also a tubular plant which once they get a toe hold are off and running, Murnong however seems to have adapted to harvesting and a fire regime and without these is not of a mind to flourish.

The murong digging sticks were impressive. Some more early accounts.

“The stick used by the native women is about seven feet in length, from one and a half to two and a half inches in diameter, and seldom less than three or four pounds in weight. It is named Kan-nan or Kor-nung. Saplings of anysuitable tree furnishing a tough wood are used for making these instruments. The an-nan, when sharpened at each end, is hardened by placing the points in a mound of smouldering bark ashes. With this stick the women dig up roots, the Mirr-n'yong especially. It is the weapon with which they fight also.”

You may be interested in one of the uses for Kangaroo Grass by the Gippsland tribes.

“In Gippsland the net was made from tall kangaroo grass twisted into twine. It was made by a method similar to that used by Europeans, but the fingers were used instead of a gauge, consequently the size of the mesh was not as regular. Bark was used to float the top of the net, and stones for sinking the bottom. … The women made the twine by twisting the two strands on the thigh and very dexterously turning it the opposite way. The could not make more than 100 yards a day, but very good nets were made from it.”

SR,

Mud and straw / stick huts are the least permanent structures short of a tent. Hunter gatherers typically establish small villages for a period then move on as the food source is diminished.

Given that Aus has been occupied for 60 000 years, the claim that colonists destroyed all signs of permanent dwellings is laughable. In Greece on the islands people build houses on concrete rafts to avoid digging foundations, as these often turn up ruins that delay construction. I can give plenty more examples even from Africa.

Still seeing those wanting to undermine the idea our first people did farm and use things
But thinking back 6000 years ago whiteman too lived much the same as we are learning our first people did
Not seeing many stone age high rise buildings

By definition, a nomad is someone or a group who don't have permanent abodes and move seasonally to where the resources are.

That some aboriginal groups weren't nomadic is a given. The recent claims that we used to think they were all nomadic is rubbish. Its always been known that some weren't nomadic. Not just those currently being lauded as ancient Einsteins but quite a few others. Some groups in Tasmania lived in permanent caves next to never-ending seafood resources. Its claimed that some in the Daintree had permanent tree-houses (but the Daintree pygmies have been written out of history). A several other groups mainly around the coasts.

But now its claimed that people who were nomadic with a given range weren't really nomadic. This is claimed for political purposes. Most changes to definitions are.

Aquaculture wasn't all that remarkable. It occurred in many parts of the world in pre-history. But Aboriginal achievements were so few that any mildly unusual achievement is treated as the work of geniuses. Wow, they built some stone shacks. As did almost every other pre-historic human group. But we are meant to swoon at their ingenuity.

The difference is that groups who built stone shacks moved forward. Groups who might have done some rudimentary tending of plants moved on.

They selected for genetic traits and created wheat, rice and maize. The aboriginals?

They domesticated animals and tended their herds. The aboriginals?

6000 years ago, 10000 years ago, peoples all over the world were building stone shacks and starting to learn how to create permanent food sources. Some of these peoples went on to invent the wheel, the arrow, metallurgy, writing, cropping and harvesting. Some built the pyramids, the Acropolis. Some worked out how to create a right-angle.

The aboriginals? Well the went on eating eel. A proud pre-history for our nation.

Dear Belly,

People can deny all they want and not loof for
reasons why in our country there's so much
disbelief regarding anything positive that's
said or discovered about our Indigenous people.
Some just don't want to know despite the
mounting evidence. However, archaeological
sites are being discovered and a vastly
different view is being presented - and that is
a good thing.

So much material is now being made available
that was hidden in the past. And the point of
this discussion was to attract attention to the
evidence that is being found. And recognised
all over the world.

Perhaps the sceptics should make the effort to visit
sites, museum, and other places in their travels
and take a look at the places and artifacts on display.
Talk to the tour guides.They just may learn
something. Budj Bim - is going to be a great tourist
attraction. A visit there may answer quite a few
questions.

Steele,

Nobody is denying that Aboriginal people built huts - of sticks, straw, seaweed, branches, stone, anything that might do the job. Building a hut is not really farming. And of course, the more plentiful the food supply might be, the more permanent the housing, and vice versa.

Using kangaroo grass to make twine for nets is also not farming.

Digging yams up is called 'gathering', harvesting, foraging. It is not farming.

Trapping fish and eels may be ingenious but it's not farming. Or herding, Paul.

I urge anybody genuinely interested to read Peter Bellwood's brilliant "First Farmers" about the origins of farming around the world (in the four or five places where it was originated). And also, for good measure, his "The Austronesians" to get a good understanding of the differences between cultivation and gathering; and on the close relations between farming populations and hunting populations - one providing protein to the other, which in turn provides carbohydrates in exchange. And each society sticking for perhaps thousands of years to its particular role. Those forms of exchange are still going on in Kalimantan and PNG and elsewhere in the world, such as between San/Khoi 'Bushmen' and local Bantu farmers.

Sorry, Steele, if this is just nonsense to you. Can we get something straight: nobody in the world was all that unique: not 'us', not anybody. Read something worthwhile and learn.

Belly, once again: we were all once foragers, hunters and gatherers: please don't go on as if you're the first person to point this out. In fact, Scots were still hunting in the Highlands, and gathering along the shores for seaweed and shellfish until last century, if not later. Irish too: where do you think Molly Malone got her cockles and mussels from ?

Joe

Foxy,

Yes, if you go along to your nearest Museum, and look for farming implements - cultivating tools, harvesting tools like early stone-edged sickles, carrying baskets, storage, etc., you might be amazed what you will find .....

Why are some people so hostile on Aboriginal people as expert hunters and knowledgeable gatherers ? People knew their environments expertly, all of the useful plants and animals that they foraged for. Go to any Museum and you will find vast numbers of hunting and gathering implements, spears, clubs, coolamons/yandis, but your tour guide might be stumped if you ask her about cultivating or harvesting tools. Keep asking, she might turn up something :)

You reckon ?

Joe

Joe

Joe,

Why is it difficult for you to accept the evidence
that archaeological discoveries are demolishing
the myth of pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians
as being more than hunters-gatherers?

I find that puzzling coming from someone who was
married to an Aboriginal woman. How do your
children feel about your attitudes?You have called
the award winning author Bruce Pascoe "a charlatan,"
yet his sources are the journals of notable
explorers and surveyors, pastoralists and
protectors and he quotes them verbatim.

I find it very disappointing that you of all people
continue to view things through the blinkered lens
of appropriation and White supremacy instead of
looking and embracing the complexity, and innovation
skills of Indigenous people.

Evidence, Foxy, not hearsay accounts and vague statements. Artifacts ? Dreaming stories about growing stuff ? Songs ?

How come the multitude of attempts by missionaries etc. to persuade people to cultivate gardens and grow vegetables and fruit trees have pretty much all come to grief ? Do you think nobody, none of the 'White supremacists', tried that ?

How come all of those self-determining communities, mostly with running water, don't seem to have anything growing anywhere ?

No probs, it will all come crashing down, this denial that people managed this country for tens of thousands of years by expertly foraging.

But keep ramping up the rhetoric - what's next after 'White supremacy' ?

Are you afraid that foraging may not have meant sovereignty or ownership of land ? Is that why this hysterical denial of foraging ?

No rush.

Joe

Joe,

You're doing it again.

We've been down this road many times.

And you still keep singing the same song.

Evidence has been provided for you by myself,
Banjo Paterson, Steele Redux. Yet you refuse to
accept any of it - including the various books
suggested for you to read.

So kindly stop. I'm not buying it any more.

Now back to the topic.

I've just read an interesting article in The Age,
6th July 2019 that tells us that thousands of
years ago, a volcano in Victoria's south-west
later named Mt Eccles by Europeans and today
named Budj Bim erupted.

In the landscape created by its eight-kilometre
long lava flow, an extraordinary aquaculture system was
built by an ancient Aboriginal settlement.

The significance of that aqua culture system
created 6,600 years ago and the continuous use ever
since by by the Gunditjmara people was recognised by
the United Nations in the unlikely setting of Azerbaijan.

After a campaign stretching more than a decade by the
local Gunditj Mirring Aboriginal Corporation, at a UNESCO
meeting in Azerbaijani capital of Baku, this Budj Bim
Cultural Landscape was added to the World Heritage Site
List.

We're told that Budj Bim sits on a site about 40 kilometres
north of Portland and is the first Australian World Heritage
site to be listed exclusively for its Aboriginal cultural
values - thanks to all those who worked so hard to have it
recognised. Quite an achievement.

Engineering works built over generations at Budj Bim allowed
the Gunditjmara people to trap eels in a comples system of
weirs, constructed channels, and holding and growing ponds.
These supplied them with enough food to sustain them year round
in villages of stone huts and to undertake trade.

Placing Budj Bim on the United Nations Heritage List will
challenge the common and false perception that Australia's
First People were nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Instead, the site clearly shows a far more complex
Aboriginal economy and lifestyle where people actively
intervened in and managed the productivity of the country.

cont'd ...

cont'd ...

Victorian Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gavin Jennings
stated that Budj Bim showed the development of -

"very extensive aqua culture practices in the
landscape, by weaving nets, and manufacturing traps,
and techniques to release or holod eels to
cater for seasonal variation of supply."
This combined with the use of basalt
rock formations to build small rock dwellings with
thatched roofs would provide a "counter narrative to the
idea that Aboriginal people didn't have any form of
settlement and that they continually moved," Mr Jennings
said.

Some people made the mistake of thinking that this landscape
in this part of western Victoria as being changed by
pastoralists who came from Europe and removed rocks to
create vast tracts of grazing land. But the Gunditjmara people
demonstrated at Budj Bim that manipulation of the
landscape was possible in an entirely more sympathetic way.

"This was manipulating it by using the landscape's form to
cultivate aquaculture and to live in that landscape in
harmony with it, rather than completely modify it to
change its land use,"Mr Jennings said.

In May the Andrews government committed $5.7 million for
preserving and promoting Aboriginal heritage, in large
part to complete the master plan for Budj Bim in
anticipation of an increase in global attention to the
World Heritage listing will bring.

Foxy,

The Aboriginal people of Australia were basically hunter-gatherers and nothing will change that, not even blinkers.

Is Mise,

Evidence is being discovered all the time that changes
that perception whether you accept it or not is of
little consequence.

Where to start ? What's the point ? Evidence means nothing. Of course people built permanent and semi-permanent shelters in very productive areas, or at least the foundational walls. Of course people trapped eels, and all manner of other fish. Who denies that ? And alongside all that, people still hunted and gathered in the slow seasons. Who denies that ?

Are you suggesting that somehow, Aboriginal people in Australia weren't hunters and gatherers ? Anywhere ? That they didn't use their human ingenuity to understand the environment in areas which were not all that productive and which, even now, preclude any form of agriculture, or even pastoralism ? That they didn't live across this continent the best way they could, by - overwhelmingly - hunting and gathering, foraging ?

You still haven't given any indication that people were farmers, if that's still relevant to this discussion. Of course people harvested ( = gathered) kangaroo grass to make twine, perhaps for all sorts of nets. Making nets is not agriculture. Catching animals in nets is not agriculture. Everybody did it wherever it was relevant.

I think I'll take up knitting, it's more enjoyable than these barren arguments.

Joe

personally I think we are far more productive to focus on the future than wasting time and money rewriting history. Who really cares if a few huts were made hundreds of years ago. We want productivity now and it won't happen if we allow the victim industry to keep pushing its barrow.

The Australian aboriginal were a stone age people. They remained a stone age people right up to 1788.

Their 'achievements' as a stone age people were no more or no less than the achievements by stone age people all over the planet. The only way you could swoon over what was done at Budj Bim is if you are utterly ignorant of achievements such as Göbekli Tepe or 100's of other stone age sites from Scotland to China.

Budj Bim is only remarkable because it was so unusual in Australia. But if it was found in Asia or Europe it would barely rate a yawn.

Equally, the notion that it proves aboriginal weren't nomadic is mere hyperbole. It shows that some aboriginals were able to fed themselves without roaming. But that has been known for generations. What has also been known for generations is that the vast majority of aboriginal communities were nomadic. That some weren't is only significant for those who are embarrassed by the backwardness of aboriginal society.

Dear Loudmouth,

So creating series of dams and channeling then using nets to harvest the fish and eels that were contained certainly fits the description of the modern eel farmers of the Western Districts. But somehow the term can't be used when describing what Aboriginals did?

Yeah right.

As to the murnong if it were simple gathering I might agree. But there was extensive replanting and fire management involved. Just because there were not fences you want to give the least charitable view you can.

As I said murnong is not easily propagated and to have the extensive tracts of it greeting the first explorers indicated substantial management went into its cultivation.

And now you seem to be accepting that kangaroo grass was harvested for making nets but the previous post you were asking Foxy to show evidence of some kind of sickle presumably before you would accept it was harvested for seed.

Here is a further excerpt re the net making from explorers;

“They collected a large quantity of kangaroo grass and steamed it in one of their ovens. When well softened it was taken out and allowed to cool. It then went through a process of separating the fibre. This was done by the women, who chewed the grass till the pulp had all disappeared. It was then well washed and when dry it was then made into the twine required for the net.”

But to you harvesting large quantities of kangaroo grass was not possible because they didn't have the tools similar to European grain harvesters?

Could you assist us by making up your bloody mind?

Joe,

I see no point in any further conversation with you
on this topic. You are the one in denial. Not me.

If you really wanted answers you would
at least acknowledge what has been provided for you
to date. Bruce Pascoe has provided and
described Aboriginal
agriculture in this country in great
detail. He's only one of many to cover this topic.
Of course you have to actually be
willing to read what they wrote.

Steele,

I see, now you're defining people who construct fish traps and gather the fish that is trapped, as farmers ? Okay, away you go.

Is it possible that murnong, yam daisy, grow naturally ? Across hundreds of square kilometres ? Or are you saying that they were all planted out by women ? And if they were grown naturally, why plant them, except as a sort of game ?

I don't know if sickle-type implements were used to harvest kangaroo grass - do you know ? It's called gathering, Steele, either way, unless it was a planted crop. Are you claiming that people planted kangaroo grass ? Why, for Christ sake - it's everywhere.

Everybody made nets, all across Australia. For catching animals - mice and rats down this way, larger animals and birds and reptiles elsewhere. Are you claiming that making nets is farming ? It's for an advanced form of hunting, Steele.

Collecting kangaroo grass is, I don't know, something similar to gathering kangaroo grass. Gathering, Steele. How you process what you gather is still an on-product of gathering. It's not farming. Even if they had had the latest whizz-bang tools, it still would not be farming. It's gathering. If they planted kangaroo grass (god knows why, it's everywhere), then yes, that would be farming.

But you've already made up your mind, long ago.

Joe

The new round of inventing history has begun !

Dear Loudmouth,

It seems you are going to extraordinary lengths to not let the word cultivation or farming of any kind slip your lips and be associated with our indigenous peoples. Of course not all aboriginal tribes were settled just as not all were nomadic.

You wrote; “I see, now you're defining people who construct fish traps and gather the fish that is trapped, as farmers ? Okay, away you go.”

Well I could be asking whether the modern eel farmers in SW Victoria should more correctly be called the 'eel hunter gatherers'. The use nets, they trap eels and secure them in large constructed dams. What do you think?

You blathered; “Is it possible that murnong, yam daisy, grow naturally ? Across hundreds of square kilometres ? Or are you saying that they were all planted out by women ?”

Of course it grew naturally, but clearing through the use of fire to allow its propagation and the splitting and planting of tubers to extend natural populations is cultivation in my book.

You say “Are you claiming that people planted kangaroo grass ?” No but you have constantly rejected reports of gathering it in rows as evidenced by the early explorers because you said the locals did not have the capacity to do so.

And on we go.

You seem to twist and turn on every point, contradicting yourself constantly with an unseemly obstinance which does you no credit. You keep claiming I have asserted things I haven't just so you can argue the point you have erroneously attributed to me.

All pretty silly and petty mate.

And to think that I once admired the bloke.

Steele,

Gathering kangaroo grass is gathering. Is that what you're saying ?

Of course, the Budj Bim eel traps are an amazing construction, advanced and pro-active foraging. Maybe I should have pointed that out earlier. But I'm still not so sure that it constituted farming. Perhaps modern-day eel-'farmers' - and farmers generally - might not think of eel traps as farming.

Yam daisy fields, covering hundred of square kilometres, in marshy ground, were burnt ? Are you sure ? Burning large areas is farming ?

Foxy, I get the feeling I'm being bullied here. Sorry, it's not working :)

Loudmouth, don't let the children get to you.
Remember they should be seen, not heard, which is fortuitous, as they can't be seen either on this medium.
As usual I find the same old regulars overstating and overreaching to always TRY unsuccessfully to make a point.
They try to push some thing on the notion that we have not heard of it before and this then implies that they know something we don't thereby giving them the feeling of superiority on the topic.
Unfortunately for them, all it does is expose their superiority complex, which describes them perfectly.
By suddenly announcing that some new findings has somehow added to the continual allegation that the blacks have some legitimate claim on this country is almost akin to treason.
More so, the attitude of these people to try to use this new discovery? to imply a new fact about the relationship between the blacks and this country.
I don't know about anyone else but I am no more interested about the relationship of the blacks and this country, today, with this new info, than I was a few minutes ago before I started reading this waste of time topic.
Unfortunately, I had to read it and the comments to get a full picture of what it was all about.
Now I know it IS ABOUT NOTHING!
Loudmouth, don't waste your time, the children have been told, and by many, but still they do not listen and want to make themselves out to be the righteous ones.
So, what the heck, let them speak, we know they're mindset by now, if we disagree with them they will only keep going on and on and on......
Like children, they like to feel important as if they made these pathetic discoveries themselves, so as to not send them into a tantrum I suggest we just agree with them, and that way we don't have to put up with their petulant attitudes any longer, and move on.

Joe i have mentioned before SRs ability to dream up all sorts of "facts", he has a very fertile imagination, but trying to discuss these "facts" is a mugs game.

Damned if 1 know if you could call it farming, but at West Point on Magnetic island off Townsville there were stone semi anchor shaped fish traps on the very gently shelving beach, extending out a couple of hundred yards, drying at low tides.

in the late 40s a small low key resort run by a Swede was established, & he rebuilt some of these to some extent. He was not sure, but he believed they were aboriginal constructions.

He built a post a wire copy of the layout, with large 6Ft by 6ft wire boxes to collect the fish, at the root of the arms. From what was said at the time, he made as much money or more, from fish sales in Townsville, as he made from his tourist trade, so they must have been efficient.

Foxy, SR, Belly, et Al,

That there is evidence that animal husbandry and permanent settlements existed in small pockets there is no doubt, that this represented the populations in general is a very long stretch.

If you want to believe that this is the case then go ahead. Your faith is your concern.

In the past, on television, in books, in our class
rooms, our nation's history was presented in a
typically narrow fashion.

Now we are beginning to look at the evidence being
found and presented to us for a reconsideration of
just the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial
Aboriginal Australians.

Archaeologists are making discoveries and finding a
more complex picture. The recognition of Budj Bim
internationally is truly amazing. It is an exciting
time.

It is a time in which we can learn a great deal if
we are open to it. Open to understanding what
Australia once was.

We have as our sources not only the archaeological
evidence but the journals of notable explorers, and
surveyors and pastoralists and protectors and authors
like Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage (to name just a
few) who quote them verbatim.

The highest form of ignorance is when someone rejects
something they don't know anything about. And arguing
with such a person is like administering medicine to
the dead.

Intelligent people speak because they have something to
say. The ignorant because they have to say something.

For those of you who come onto this discussion with
only insults to add. Please don't. If you have nothing
to contribute to this discussion or if the topic is
of no interest to you - start your own discussion and
be happy. Don't try to divert mine.

Thank You.

Foxy,

For those of you who come onto this discussion with only insults to add, please don't. If you have nothing to contribute to this discussion or if the topic is of no interest to you - start your own discussion and be happy.

Thank You.

Joe

Never posted before so forgive me.
Firstly love your work Altrave, Loudmouth and MHaze.
SteeleR you made a lot of statements in " ......" but did not reference those statements.

I just have this to say -
A site of cultural significance doesn’t mean it should be blocked off from the world , if anything the locals should start farming eels in the same fashion and charge tourists , similar to what the Maori have done in Rotorua .
Cheers
Narelle

The worst form of ignorance is someone that reads and cherry picks only the information to support their preconceived bias.

similar to what the Maori have done in Rotorua .
Narelle47,
Yeah, makes sense. I gather sense hasn't been outlawed in NZ yet ?

May not be enough water out there right now, and welcome to our new poster
Not sure looking at the film from there the water still runs there or that this drought has not affected it

Dear Nareele47;

You write;

“Never posted before so forgive me.
Firstly love your work Altrave, Loudmouth and MHaze.
SteeleR you made a lot of statements in " ......" but did not reference those statements.

Well no you have posted before and you have heaped praise on some of those you have mentioned previously.

My hope is this was just a mistake rather than what appears on first blush to be an outright lie.

As to my referencing or lack thereof I, after many years of cajoling, have failed to convince most of the rightwingers here to post referencing links. Indeed I have even been taken to task for posting too many as they wish to keep this as an opinion only site, untroubled by truths forced on them by other documentation.

Therefore I am usually required to do my own googling on a particular sentence from some belligerent poster to find the source. All I have done is picked up their practice. If I am replying to the less belligerent I tend to furnish proper links.

As you appear to be a belligerent type I am happy to teach you how to go about finding the source of something I have posted.

If you type in “They collected a large quantity of kangaroo grass and steamed it in one of their ovens. When well softened it was taken out and allowed to cool.” with the quotation marks into Google it will take you to a book called Kulin and Kurnai By David Frankel, Janine Major. It is a collection of writings from the invaders to this country during the 19th century. If you wanted to know more you can borrow the book from a library. It is an interesting read.

However if you are true to the form showing in your posts to the site thus far I sense there will be little inclination to do so as having an entrenched mindset thus challenged can be distinctly unpleasant. However you may surprise me.

I think this is all starting to make sense to me now: so the Gunditjmara are entitled to Native Title over all of the Budj Bim area ? Property rights ? And, more importantly, sovereignty, whatever that might mean ?

And so the communities in the Torres Strait and up on the tip of Cape York who planted gardens, should also have sovereignty ? After all, they weren't 'mere' hunters and gatherers ? They cultivated the ground specifically to grow crops throughout the year, every year, so their property rights are recognised in the British common law. Is that it ?

I wish there were many more Indigenous land lawyers, and lawyers dealing with issues such as sovereignty and 'nations'. I don't know of any. Surely there must be some now - with sixty thousand graduates, there must be lawyer numbers in the four figures. They could tease out the distinctions between property rights and sovereignty.

Ah, I get it: Property rights ARE an expression of sovereignty, one means the other, and if any Indigenous group can prove they had some form of property rights, then ALL Indigenous groups - even as one Indigenous group (since all Indigenous people are one people, their culture is all the same everywhere) - can claim sovereignty ? To all of Australia ? That's the line the 'Left' wants to push now ?

Good luck.

Joe

Steele - thank you for the reference book.

I cannot recall making an individual post before.
Thanks for refereshing my memory with such grace.
I might have to swallow some steel and toughen up.
Regards
Narelle

SR, I didn't know you were on a first name basis with the authors of the book you "referred" to.
I am impressed.
Did they give you first hand knowledge of these 'facts', written or otherwise?
Or maybe you were there and saw for yourself, what they refer to in making these 'revelations'?
No, I didn't think so, so tell me then, how do you know the veracity and provenance of these findings?
Oh, of course they have been verified and confirmed by other 'experts'.
Mind you I'm not saying it's a load of bull, just saying it's more than likely not what it has been described as, as it seems to fly in the face of what has been described and promoted by the blacks themselves for as long as we have been here.
Did no-one speculate that this finding might be from other sources, and nothing to do with the blacks?
Oh well, it helps push the blacks mantra and agenda so what the heck let's forget about the truth and objectivity and just go with assumptions and subjectivity.

Welcome Narelle47.

Careful there SR, with that last post, your hope of being mistaken for a reasonable type of person is slipping even further from your grasp.

So hard to comment in here - I cannot see previous comments - so have done c/p.
Thank you 'Individual' and 'Belly' for your welcoming and informative thoughts on my contribution of turning the area the area into a tourist spot and sell eels as they have done in Rotorua.

'Yeah, makes sense. I gather sense hasn't been outlawed in NZ yet ?'
Posted by individual,

'May not be enough water out there right now, and welcome to our new poster
Not sure looking at the film from there the water still runs there or that this drought has not affected it."
Posted by Belly, Wednesday, 10 July 2019 11:49:27 AM

Steele,

Oy. Collecting' kangaroo grass, no matter what you want it for or do with it (and I'll refrain from suggesting a vulgar purpose for it: watch out for those tiny seeds), is just another word for 'gathering'. Not 'cultivating'. Not 'farming'. Collecting = gathering.

How to explain the difference between gathering and farming simply ? Between, say, picking peaches off a tree, and planting and caring for a peach tree over some years ? Well, you may somehow 'collect' your thoughts', or 'gather your thoughts', but nobody in their right mind on OLO would suggest that you had 'cultivated' them.

When I lived in one community, and tried to set up a vegetable garden, I found great enthusiasm for the final stage of the process of digging, watering, weeding, fertilising, digging, weeding, weeding, weeding, and harvesting. One bloke asked if he could pick some of the sweet corn for a party, and enthusiastically and with some effort picked the lot. Gathering. Harvesting. Collecting. Picking. A form of foraging. A common form of distribution of labour: Somebody did the digging and weeding, someone else did the harvesting. I felt like the Little Black Hen :) . That lasted for only two seasons, then I got some sense and said, bugger this.

Joe

Foxy,

I appreciate that you've created this little fantasy world where Budj Bim undoes all previous history and shows that the aboriginals where at the forefront of world aquaculture ...or something...and that it additionally shows that aboriginals weren't nomadic.

And that you much prefer that 'facts' not be mentioned that might upset that little fantasy world. But its really a bit much to expect others to just acquiesce to your ill-informed wishes.

It might be that you were under the impression that everyone thought all natives were nomadic but that isn't so. It may be that you were under the impression that everyone thought all natives lacked rudimentary technology, but that isn't so.

Might I suggest that you acquaint yourself with something like the diaries of Charles Sturt ( http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/sturt/charles/s93t/complete.html) which will show that your impressions as to knowledge about aboriginals is wrong. I mention these diaries because I read then some 40 years ago and they remain a valuable source as to the nature of the untouched native culture in and around the more prosperous parts of south Australia. Anyone familiar with the writings isn't the least surprised by Budj Bim.

It is clear that this World Heritage Listing is a rather cynical attempt to muddy the waters as to the true nature of pre-1788 culture.

Loudmouth,
Is it not the case, that given the right circumstances, sun, soil, and water, seeds get carried by the wind and many plants grow prolifically and become an un-welcome species in some situations, such as pattersons curse.
If not sprayed to kill it off it spreads for 'miles' left unchecked, and this stuff is poisonous to livestock.
So if this one species is 'natural', so then could others be the same.
Now I know that crops have to be seeded by an external means, but when the fauna is natural to the environment it grows 'naturally', it does not get 'farmed', it just grows and all one has to do is gather it up.
If these species being discussed here fall within these parameters then this would clear things up, without question or doubts, and would negate the idea that the blacks were once 'farmers'?.

As to the great Kangaroo Grass debate...I don't know if you've actually grown the stuff but its as hardy as any plant you'll find.

Additionally, since it clumps, its rather easy to get great volumes of 'reeds' with little effort - scythes not required.

And it self seeds prolifically, farming and cultivation not required. Indeed even varieties that are sold as non-self seeding, self seed.

But might I point out a rather inconvenient fact. In the Middle-East and Europe, stone age peoples found some grasses that they were able to use to get grain. By selecting and cultivation they were able to develop a range of grains, (the best being wheat) that eventually allowed them to create surpluses. From that came settlements, then villages, then cities and civilisation.

Ditto in east Asia with regards to rice.

Ditto in South America with regards to maize.

Diligence and hard work resulted in the rise of modern man.

Kangaroo grass could have served the same purpose here. The wild versions of wheat, for example, don't look promising as a primary food source. But it became so by the ingenuity of the early farmers.

As for the aboriginal....

Narelle,

My apologies for not responding earlier but I had used
up my postings.

Welcome to the Forum

The Budj Bim site will not be blocked off from the world.
In fact the opposite will happen.

There are 3 main benefits of being added to the World
Heritage site list.

1) Recognition of Gunditjimara achievements.
2) Increased protection of the site.
3) Potential tourism boost.

In May the Andrews government in Victoria committed
$5.7 million for preserving and promoting Aboriginal
heritage, in large part to complete the master plan
for Budj Bim in anticipation of an increase in global
attention to the World Heritage listing will bring.

mhaze,

What "fantasy world?"

Historians, writers, archaeologists, academics, are
now re-thinking Australia's perceptions of Indigenous
land management. They are the ones arguing that the
first Australians had complex systems of agriculture
that went beyond the hunter-gatherer tag.

That they were in fact, our first farmers, whose intimate
knowledge of managing native plants and animals sustained
them for thousands of years.

If you prefer not to hear these arguments. It's your
choice.

All I can do is recommend works that I found useful.
Indigenous writer Bruce Pascoe has recently published a book
called "Dark Emu: Black seeds, agriculture or accident?"
It challenges the popular perception of our Indigenous
past. He covers the wrtings of many explorers including
Sturt.

Pascoe's book echoes historian Bill Gammage's "The Biggest
Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia." Also
worth a read.

You made the statement that the heritage listing of the
Budj Bim site was and I quote - a "cynical attempt to
muddy the waters." Really?

Well, it took a decades long campaign for this to happen
by traditional owners. This landscape has been cared for
over thousands of years and is so important to the
Gunditjmara people. They are so proud to now be able to
share their achievements and story with the world.

Foxy,

Pascoe talks of 'black seeds'. Did he mean kangaroo grass ? You've got the book, so you could help the discussion by telling us ignoramuses.

So what else did Aboriginal people plant ? But why plant something which is everywhere ? And with digging tools, i.e. cultivating tools, which nowadays are non-existent ? i.e. none in Museums ?

Can you understand why some of us are sceptical ? Do you expect us to simply believe, like you're the pastor of some crack-pot evangelical church ? To go all happy-clappy over some pretty wild theory, for which you provide no real evidence ? That we should believe without question ? Because you can cite Authority off of Google ?

Joe

Thank you Foxy.

"Welcome to the Forum

The Budj Bim site will not be blocked off from the world.
In fact the opposite will happen.

There are 3 main benefits of being added to the World
Heritage site list.

1) Recognition of Gunditjimara achievements.
2) Increased protection of the site.
3) Potential tourism boost."

Hopefully tourism can be boosted by opening a restaurant nearby and using eels freshy caught and served to eager tourists - Maybe Pascoe could organise that.
Narelle

Good one, Narelle :)

Joe

Narelle,

The Budj Bim site is managed by
Gunditjmara Traditional owners and Parks
Victoria.

They already look after the native plants,
and animals, the buildings, and maintaining
walking tracks, providing guided tours and
running the visiting schools program.
There's a huge master plan to make
this a popular tourist attraction. I'm sure
that restaurants and other facilities are included
in the plan.

I suggest you contact the Gunditj Mirring Traditional
Owners Aboriginal Corporation at:
Shop/4
48 Edgar Street
Heywood Vic. 3304.

Tel: (03) 5527-1427.

However, don't
limit yourself to just one author. Perhaps our
resident Aboriginal expert on this forum
- Joe (Loudmouth)
might also qualify for an invite?

Dear Nareele47;

You wrote;

“Steele - thank you for the reference book.”

No problems, I hope you make good use of it.

“I cannot recall making an individual post before.”

You posting history can be found here; http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=66217

There you will find you joined the forum in 2017 and that you made a post just a week ago. But then again a week can be a long time for some.

“Thanks for refereshing(sic) my memory with such grace.”

I wasn't attempting to be gracious but then again neither were you.

“I might have to swallow some steel and toughen up.”

Oh I think you are plenty tough enough and pugnacious enough on the issue of indigenous rights that you felt compelled to reply to Is Mise in this fashion on a thread about SSM.

“Hopefully, this will herald the end of all discrimination in this country and we can get on with the task of creating true equality. Posted by Is Mise, Wednesday, 15 November 2017 2:41:40 PM”

“Absolutely - let's stop discrimination and have welfare based on needs only - and not race based.”

This is despite neither the topic nor the subsequent posts going anywhere near questions of race.

Then this from you;

“I am so pleased that changing the Constitution to have a separate page for the Indigenous - or - how many treaties - how many tribes?.....has been rejected.

United we stand.
One people.
One country.
One Nation.”

The capitalisation of the 'N' was naturally the clincher.

Now I may be completely wrong and you aren't a One Nation supporting bigot and if so you will have my apology.

Am I?

(since all Indigenous people are one people, their culture is all the same everywhere)
Loudmouth,
Doesn't the concept of one people entail that they can clearly communicate with one another ?
Wouldn't that outcome be many little nations in Australia ? At what stage does a tribe become a sovereign nation when it wasn't actually a Nation before invasion ? I recall a Qld Labor Deputy Premier telling me some years ago that they were toying with the idea of creating an Aboriginal State on Cape York to get all the Aboriginals out of the cities & live happily ever after in their own State.

SR,

You speak as if words like racist, bigot, homophobic, antisemitic,
atheist, sexist, to name a few, are bad.
They are merely Nouns, which are used to make a more refined comment during the course of a conversation.
Is it not correct to express oneself in exactly the manner in which they feel will best convey their message?
If someone feels aggrieved by use the of such words, maybe they need to study the context of the message before hand.

Hi Narelle47, "sell eels as they have done in Rotorua". Not familiar with Maori selling (smoked) eels in Rotorua, probely do, they sell many other foods, there is a thriving Maori culture business in the local area catering to tourists. The sale of NZ green stone has declined significantly in both Rotorua, and in the major green stone trading location of Hokitika in the South Island. Cheap Chinese imports have impacted the local trade. My wife's Pounamu cost me $350 ten years ago, done by an authentic Maori carver in Rototua, I could have bought a cheap Chinese neck decorator, an inferior import, and look-a-like, for $150 at the time, but of no cultural significance what so ever.

Just on eels, great when smoked, they were once plentiful in the creeks and rivers of Northland NZ, but my bros tell me they are harder to get these days, due to Pakeha farmers using fertilisers, the run off pollutes the waterways, too much weed in the water sucking up the oxygen, and eels are very sensitive to their environment, less eels.

Hi Individual,

Yes indeed: that's my point. Like all traditional societies, from Scotland to Mexico to New Zealand, fragmentation is the norm: clan against clan, forever. Aboriginal people - or at least their 'leaders' - seem to have a genius for fragmenting, breaking up into warring factions, each trying to dominate and crush the other.

When my late wife and I were making Aboriginal Flags back in 1972, we desperately hoped that the Flag would be something which pulled people together, one Flag, some unity at last. At the time, every dickwick was knocking up his own flag, replete with all the stereotypical artifacts and animals. We tried to counter that. We were just factory workers back then, and kept making the Flag until about 1980, perhaps one or two hundred, sending them around the country, all for free.

Now many groups are knocking up their own flags again, dickwiks reborn like bloody zombies. The concept of 'nation' is bound to set group against group. So many issues in Indigenous affairs will end up doing the same unless people are very careful, such as language revival.

As for sovereignty, power over land, some elements of government, surely this was at the clan level ? With 300-500 language groups, and by definition many clans within each language group, then it's possible that there were many thousands of clans across Australia before 1788. Ergo theoretically, thousands of 'nations'.

Of course, most Indigenous people - at least the majority in the 'south' - may not know exactly what their clan is, especially given the traditional practice of taking your father's clan, and in any case,most city-based people might find it all totally irrelevant.

'Their own State' ? How different is that from Apartheid, particularly since the great majority of Indigenous people are now urban ? Do Indigenous 'leaders' need some education in what Apartheid is ?

Sometimes I despair about the idiot pressures on Indigenous people by their 'leaders'. I suspect that sometimes you feel the same.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Joe, nice convoluted attempt at justifying British colonisation. All along I have been saying this argument has more to do with some peoples fear of what recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty might lead to. Rather than anything to do with how Aboriginals interacted with the land, or their relationship with that land.

Paul,

What on earth has all of this got to do with British colonisation ?

I suppose one can find some sort of link between any two phenomena, but are you suggesting that widespread Aboriginal farming is a necessary condition to asserting Aboriginal sovereignty ?

That respect for the ingenuity - and pre-eminence - of hunting and gathering societies somehow cuts across any rationale for sovereignty ?

That to point out that Aboriginal groups were fragmented, somehow casts doubt on the ideal of a single Aboriginal sovereignty ?

You could be right .....

You've got a job in front of you, haven't you ?

Joe

Rather than anything to do with how Aboriginals interacted with the land, or their relationship with that land.
Paul1405,
Interesting, how did they interact with the land, apart from roaming over it & surviving on it ?

Difficult to see why so many want us to believe our first people lived on not with the land
Even now the ties to country can be seem'
Far more than eel farming too
Bush management by controlled burning, once,not now, stopped runaway fires destroying forests and wildlife

If they were all cultivating as farmers why did they need rations.... which initially were for the elderly, and children as it was reckoned that the able men and women could forage - sorry cultivate their many fields to survive. Thus no need to move to ration depots and later mission stations for the majority to enable easy and regulated distribution of rations.

Tench describes the conditions of the Aborigines - their huts consisting of "pieces of bark laid together in the form of an oven open at one end and very low ... long enough for a man to lie at full length in", but they rely more on caverns and caves. P53

huts "consist only of pieces of bark laid together in the form of an oven, open at one end and very low, though long enough for a man to lie at full length in." and "too low to admit the lord of it to stand upright, but long and wide enough to admit thre or four persons to lie under it." p 260

"their hunting-huts which consist of nothing more than a large piece of bark, bent in the middle and open at both ends, exactly resembling two cards set up to form an acute angle;" P112

Yet Pascoe persists in claiming there was"housing construction."
Where is his evidence of all this construction?
He also includes Australian aborigines as being the same as Torres Strait Islanders who did cultivate and did have advanced construction of huts and villages compared to the mainlanders. They had this because they had to stay in one place to cultivate their crops.
Lastly if Pascoe's "evidence of Indigenous agriculture, textile manufacture and housing construction." is true then why was the population so low - 1 million or less.

The ABS comments "Recent archaeological evidence suggests that a population of 750,000 Indigenous peoples could have been sustained."

https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/68AE74ED632E17A6CA2573D200110075?opendocument&fbclid=IwAR3YYp83VIc1ugjjSktSLgwxhzTT9_n0fQ4cCO5AnVVZfhAYiLVPjQ-Xx3U

Narelle,

>>The ABS comments "Recent archaeological evidence suggests that a population of 750,000 Indigenous peoples could have been sustained." <<

At the best of times ? Or at the worst of times ? There wasn't an 'average' population - it would have fluctuated over a century or two, from very low during long droughts, perhaps down to 250,000 across the country (depending how widespread and long the droughts were) to a build-up of half a million or more, depending on how long the next droughts held off. And another long period . to re-build numbers.

After all, it takes time for human groups to build up their numbers after catastrophic droughts. During droughts, Aboriginal women would not have got pregnant, their youngest children might not survive if they don't have milk (which in turn depends on reliable food supplies), so they have to be sacrificed. Older people, especially women, would not be able to keep up with the group if it had to move quickly outside the drought-affected areas.

So the numbers would have declined, partly through mortality, but mainly because women could not bear children during a drought (and the children born four or five years earlier also would have died). So a drought of, say, five years, would mean no new children for ten years, and older people, say those over fifty, dying as well. A very long drought, say ten years, would leave a population aged only from fifteen to fifty to re-populate their country again over the coming decades and centuries.

One drought in the thirteenth century lasted thirty two years. Characteristically, the longer a drought, the more widespread it would be. And so the longer it would take to build the population up again.

Joe

"Historians, writers, archaeologists, academics, are
now re-thinking Australia's perceptions of Indigenous
land management."

Who? Who are these people who were so ill-advised of their area of expertise that they needed the heritage listing to bring Budj Bim to their notice?

Now I will agree, as I said earlier, that there is a concerted effort to raise the status of the pre-1788 aboriginal society from just another example of stone age lethargy to something to be admired. As with the attempts in the 1980s to turn try to create a myth of systematic genocide, academics on the make will leap onboard, the facts be damned. And it will peter out as others realise the facts don't marry with the claims.

Budj Bim has been known about for decades to my knowledge and probably much longer to the cognoscenti. As has the knowledge that south eastern Aboriginals had housing of a sort, knew how to fish with nets, and spread seed to ensure there was a supply of food the next time they passed by on their wanderings. Blainey even talked of some south-eastern groups having a higher standard of living than some British workers in 1788.

But the problem is that this knowledge, long known, is now being distorted. "Oh one group did aquaculture therefore aboriginals knew about and were advanced" they imply. "Oh one group built huts therefore aboriginals weren't nomadic."

/cont

/cont

But the fact is most tribes didn't do aquaculture. Most tribes didn't have even ramshackled huts. Most groups did rely entirely on what they found today and were one drought away from disaster. Most tribes didn't know how to spread seed to provide food for their next passage through a region. Most groups didn't sow, didn't bake. Some even didn't know how to make and use fire.

But the Foxy's of the world don't want to know that and most certainly don't want it to be true. So they adhere to people like Pascoe, long on assertion, short on data.

We've been here before, and will get here again.

Just on Pascoe, I came across this quote from an interview in the Australian...“Aboriginal people, who invented government 120,000 years ago, decided that the worst thing they could do in a society was fight for land. [They] decided everybody would have a house, everybody would have enough to eat, everybody would take part in the culture.”

Struth.

Narelle47,

Good to see input giving balance to a conversation.
We are continually faced with comments and opinions by some, in particular another female, who's attitude is one of complete dominance and knowledge of the topic in question.
Her refusal to even consider that her submissions are merely HER opinions, make her even more annoying by her unwillingness to consider anything which counters her opinion.
It is refreshing to read a fresh presentation debunking hers as we are continually having to accept her righteous attitude, especially when we are maligned for pointing out other factors or facts either questioning or debunking her submission.
I particularly dislike her continual attempt at idolising certain people or races.
So any time someone new comes along with a challenging view, it is most welcome, as it tells those of similar ilk that they are not right they WILL be challenged and that they will no longer be taken seriously for continually trying to blindly and arrogantly push their agenda, which quickly becomes insignificant.

Thank You so much for the recent comments
from Joe (Loudmouth), Narelle, mhaze,
and last but not least - ALTRAV.

These comments have provided me
with a further insight into the subject of
my PhD dissertation.

They are all greatly
appreciated because they add further authenticity to
my research on the topic studied, and
shall be added to my work
which I am hoping to have published.

mhaze,

Here's a link that explains a few things for you:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/24/dark-emus-infinite-potential-our-kids-have-grown-up-in-a-fog-about-the-history-of-the-land

mhaze,

well spoken, could not have put it better myself.
Just wrote a piece in response to Narelle47's which also challenges the notion of idolising, or attempting to idolise, when it is completely unjustified or unfounded to do so.
Some, we all know who, would have us believe that the blacks were the first people to set foot on this land, and as such, own it.
I'm not so gullible or easily conned.
I still refute the notion that they have been here for as long as some 'experts' will have us believe.
Anyway good to get a realistic and pragmatic view on things.
Keep it up.

Foxy offers a link that " explains a few things for you". The link? A hagiography to Pascoe from the Grauniad on the Yarra (aka the Guardian). May as well show me an article in Pravda to show how good Putin is.

But no new information there. Just more unresearched and unsupported assertion that many just want to be true. But ask who are the experts who are suddenly buying this and...crickets.

Loudmouth,

Your population discussion is very true. All nomadic populations lived in smallish groups. There was/is an upper/lower limit to the numbers. The upper limit is set by how much food can be gathered in a given area. As you say, nature sets that limit as it does for all mammals. The lower limit is set by the need to have adequate numbers to survive. That is the need to have enough men to fight off attacks and enough to perform hunts or manage things like nets and the such like.

For stone age peoples small groups do create some problems in terms of genetics since there isn't enough diversity in such groups to maintain themselves. Some primitive societies overcame this by having regular festivals where groups could share diversity around - ie marry off the daughters. Aboriginals solved it by having regular wars and raids where women were stolen to bolster the tribes numbers.

As you say, droughts were a major problem for such groups and recovering from them took a long time. Sturt's diary of his expedition to the Macquaire Marshes talks a lot about the sorry state of the tribes battling a long period of drought. Another problem for such nomadic people was that women could really only have a kid every two to three years. This was because women were required to carry the youngsters and couldn't transport more than one. So having two toddlers was out of the question. Within a month of settlement, one aboriginal man was observed killing his two year old daughter. The mother had died and with no one to carry the child it would not have survived.

mhaze,

You did ask who the historians, academics, et cetera
were. You did not specify that they had to only be from
sources that you would approve of.

I gave you a link
from an author whose book has won a slew of awards.
An author who has inspired many projects - from
poetry to permaculture, from the arts to agriculture
and whose work was adapted into a dance performance by
Bangarra in 2016 and is still touring the major cities.

Also the fact that Pascoe in his book uses unimpeachable
European sources and quotes them varbatim appears to have
been lost on you. Sources such as the diaries of explorers
full of information about the way Aboriginal people
managed their lands. Pascoe read them in their original
form.

The example given in the link from the explorer Charles
Sturt I thought you'd find interesting. Especially
the reference to pannicum, as the native grass the
Aboriginal people ground into flour for the "cake"
that saved Charles Sturt. Then also given in the link
is the research that's currently being done at Melbourne
University.

All this in answer to your question. But obviously,
it was a waste of my time. Just as giving you Pravda
about Putin would have been. However, this link was in
English so I assumed you would not have a language
problem with reading it as you would have had with Pravda.

cont'd ...

mhaze,

As you seem interested in Pravda - there's
an English version online:

http://www.pravdareport.com

Well, I suppose inventing history on the run is part of evolution too !

Foxy,

Oy. Collecting grass seed to make into pannican/pannicum, is collecting; gathering; harvesting. It is not planting, cultivating or growing. It is not farming.
Roasting kangaroo grass over a fire is not farming. Setting fire to the bush is not farming. Looking out over a huge path of kangaroo grass is no farming.

But I could be wrong, since, after all, Bruce Pascoe does have a very big beard, and thereby looks real Aboriginal. So who's the mug ?

Joe

Joe,

The diaries of the explorers present us with a
different view to yours:

The explorer Sturt saw "grassy plains spreading out
like a boundless stubble field, the grass being
the kind from which the natives collect seed ...
large heaps that had been thrashed out by the
natives were piled up like haycocks." Sturt was
observing a major harvest that must have provided
a great surplus for the large number of people
known to inhabit the region.

Surplus food production is one of the acknowledged
characteristics of sedentary agriculture.

On a later expedition, one of Sturt's party, Brock,
regarded his impression of land near Evelyn Creek.

"Here it is quite like a harvest field ... In every
hollow we found the remains of the natives' labour
in the shape of the straw from which they had
beaten out the seed. The party remarked on the
prodigious qualities of grain harvested.

This was the same grass explorer Mitchell had seen in
other areas, Panicum decompositum, commonly called
batley grass or native millet, and known to the
local Aboriginal people as cooly or parpar.
In fact, one of the areas Sturt visited was called
Parpir, and his journal records that they had been riding
through vast and pleasant grasslands.

Sturt also noticed that, "The grass consists of Panicum and
several new sorts, one of which springs from the old stem.
The plants were verdant indeed, the luxuriant pasturage
surpassed in quality... anything I had ever seen."

And there's so much more detail given in these diaries.
Another plant, Coopers clover (Trigonella sauvissima)
had also been grown and harvested by Aboriginal people.
Mitchell goes on to describe this in great detail.

These facts are provided in the original writings of
the explorers. What you choose to believe is of course
your choice. However, it still remains that these facts
do exist and are there for researchers and reputable
authors to acknowledge.

Foxy,

Collecting is gathering. It is not farming. Repeat after me: Collecting is gathering. It is not farming.

Harvesting vast fields of grass seed is also called collecting. Gathering, too. It is not farming, unless you can demonstrate that people planted those vast fields of grass. If they didn't, if they were 'natural' features, then the people harvested the seed, collected the seed, gathered the seed. And of course, the women ground it into a sort of flour for damper.

Or you can ignore reality. That's up to you. I'm puzzled why a humane person such as yourself disrespects and demeans the hunter-gatherer way of life so much as to deny it ? Do you think that a foraging society DIDN'T have property rights, or sovereignty over their lands ? Is that it ?

Joe

Joe,

I do not disrespect or demean the hunter-gatherer
tag as you put it. That's a diversion on your part.
On the other hand why do you find it so difficult
to accept the possibility that Aboriginal
Australians managed the land?

You ask for evidence - yet when sources are provided
you don't bother looking into them. Only disclaiming.
The early writings of explorers and settlers are central
to my argument that Aboriginal Australians managed the
land. They described the cultivated way Indigenous
people did it. You should look into that - and into
the work of Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe. If all you
can come up with are constant denials - I see no point
in continuing this conversation.

Dear Narelle47;

You asked;

“Yet Pascoe persists in claiming there was"housing construction."
Where is his evidence of all this construction?

Well he lays it all out in his book almost exclusively citing explorer records. You have obviously read about Tench, why don't you read Dark Emu and then tell us where you think the early explorers got it wrong and you are right.

You might even want to wise up old mhaze because he certainly isn't singing from your play book either and he is suppose to be on your side.

“... south eastern Aboriginals had housing of a sort, knew how to fish with nets, and spread seed to ensure there was a supply of food the next time they passed by on their wanderings. Blainey even talked of some south-eastern groups having a higher standard of living than some British workers in 1788.”

Dear mhaze,

You write;

“But the problem is that this knowledge, long known, is now being distorted. "Oh one group did aquaculture therefore aboriginals knew about and were advanced" they imply. "Oh one group built huts therefore aboriginals weren't nomadic."

Who on earth is saying this? I'm certainly not. The evidence is quite strong that there was a mixture. Not only that health outcomes suffered when some groups became more sedentary just as in Europe. Early explorers certainly did talk about the superior health, humour and demeanour of the aboriginals they were encountering.

An interesting reflection is the general overall health, both physical and mental of our 'grey nomads'. I spent 6 months travelling around Australia and have seen how much they flourish due to the life style. Wouldn't it be interesting to have archaeologists in few thousand years trying to find answers about the number of caravaning and campsites which proliferated during our time. Temporary nature of tents and caravans may well be thought in the future to indicate the living conditions of those in poverty or less educated.

Perhaps those whose lands provided a rich variety of seasonal foods subsequently employed less substantial structures.

6000 years ago, how did our ancestors live?
Why are we trying to forget our first people survived in a harsher than most country
Yes they did not build cities, maybe their lifestyle did not need them

Dear Loudmouth,

You had better start getting stuck into mahze now. He has slipped the traces;

He rightly points out that aboriginals "spread seed to ensure there was a supply of food the next time they passed by on their wanderings"

First they sowed the seed...

Like this but instead of using roundup they used fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QhjzEBpBCk

Still not farming?

Sturt also noticed that, "The grass consists of Panicum and
several new sorts, one of which springs from the old stem.
The plants were verdant indeed, the luxuriant pasturage
surpassed in quality... anything I had ever seen."

Where & what time of year was that ?

There were similarities on Cape York/Torres Strait also. Depending in which season the explorers arrived they found the arteas either luxuriant or utterly decimated.
Some recorded hundreds of people on Muralug Island yet others mentioned just on 50. it wasn't realised till years later that people, in fact whole tribes moved according to the seasons.

Without a leavening agent they baked cakes.
If the Aboriginal industry had not quashed historians over the past 20+ years and archaeologist research. Pascoe would be laughed out of town.

We cannot disprove his claims scientifically as that research is not allowed.
Fortunately scientists overseas such as the Max Planck Institute did not return all archaeological samples as demanded by the Aboriginal industry.

They fear Native Title will lose it's grip - they have 60% of the country now under NT.The aim is 100%
Pascoe has a captive audience from the sorry sorry people and Aboriginal industry as it suits their agenda.

QUESTION: When did Aborigines cease their agriculture?
Dingoes were certainly fresh meat 'at heal.'

We must stop Australia being the laughing stock around the world for not allowing honest history and archaeological research.

EXTRACT:
Did Australia invent bread?

'Bruce Pascoe is dedicated to reviving native ingredients as cultivated by Aboriginal people – baking with ancient grains is just the beginning.'
May 03, 2016 12:00amBy Max Allen
Pascoe writes in Dark Emu, mere hunter-gatherers ' a preconception that "has been used as a political tool to justify dispossession".(Really - political tool)
.....Aboriginal people as farmers: sowing, harvesting and storing seed on a vast scale; cultivating crops; building permanent villages; trading preserved surpluses of food over huge distances.

And the author doesn't just want us to learn about this hidden history(who said it is hidden)

the murnong, or yam daisy. , tragically, one of the first plants to be almost entirely wiped out by the settlers' sheep within just a couple of years of their arrival.(WOW)

the revival of indigenous grains native millet and kangaroo grass

Which means, of course, that we're the world's first bakers," he says, smiling. My hope is that Australians will learn to feel proud about this - they'll say, 'hey, we're the country that invented bread'.

https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/news/food-news/did-australia-invent-bread-2708?fbclid=IwAR0kUY6PuOGXEa2xJJs-VqKFRka52I0svwHdM8KlHQWsqbB8G4HHbvZOats

Here is something scientific.
Much of the arid areas of outback Australia is covered in Mitchell grass. Courtesy of Major Mitchell who surveyed those areas which is where it got its name. There are numerous varieties.
Mitchell grass is a tuft of weedy grass and grows for up to 30 years.
Highly drought tolerant and self seeding. Attempts to cultivate the grass is hard as seeds are not harvested commercially as a whole, and very expensive.
So why would Indigenous be cultivating Mitchell Grass areas when it does it on its own and doesn't need irrigation.

Charles Massey, a fifth generation sheep farmer in
NSW and agriculture reform advocate has tried to
promote his approach to "regenerative agriculture,"
within the context of the history of Australian
agriculture.

He acknowledges the importance of recognising the past
continuing connection of Indigenous people to the
land and contends that to " manage, nurture and regenerate
country, then we need to fathom where it came from, what it
is made of, how it works and functions, how it was
managed before us." While we can't change past wrongs, we can
start re-thinking the environmental, social and political
implications of the way we produce our food in this
continent.

There's more at the following link:

http://theconversation.com/cultivating-a-nation-why-the-mythos-of-the-australian-farmer-is-problematic-106517

Indigenous award-winning author Bruce Pascoe is also
dedicated to reviving native ingredients as cultivated by
Aboriginal people - and as the link below tells us -
baking with grains is just the beginning.

He invites us to think differently about the future of
farming in Australia. He wants us to embrace Aboriginal
agriculture and the recovery of our traditional food
plants. Several projects are well under way.

There's more at:

http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/news/food-news/did-australia-invent-bread-2708

In case we think that issues which require radical solutions
that are likely to harm vested economic and political
interests are a thing of the past, think again. New ideas
instead of being welcome for the opportunities they open up
for the improvement of the human lot, are seen as threats to
those who have become comfortable in their ideologies.

Galileo was put under house arrest by the Vatican for
saying the earth moved around the sun. In fact in 1633
the church made him recant his theory of the universe.

Our farmers do need new ways of farming. They may
yet learn from the past?

Dear Narelle47,

You write;

"If the Aboriginal industry had not quashed historians over the past 20+ years and archaeologist research."

And

"We cannot disprove his claims scientifically as that research is not allowed."

What a crock. Name one historian who has been 'quashed' and what research is not allowed?

As for the rest of your post what on earth are you trying to say?

Foxy
'He acknowledges the importance of recognising the past
continuing connection of Indigenous people to the
land and contends that to " manage, nurture and regenerate
country, then we need to fathom where it came from, what it
is made of, how it works and functions, how it was
managed before us." While we can't change past wrongs, we can
start re-thinking the environmental, social and political
implications of the way we produce our food in this
continent.'
My father born 1907 always burnt back our 'bush paddock' in a fashion that the fire burnt in on itelf.
Good agricultural and farming practice.

In the late 60's and early 70's farmers would still burn back growth during winter.
Also local councils with the assitance of fire brigades burnt back edges of country roads and within small towns so as to avoid the ravages of fires either man made or lightening strikes in aummer.
Sadly the greenies moved in and stopped that - a recent result was the devastating fires IN Canberra in 2004 - my daughter's house miraculously escaped while houses 2 doors away were burnt to the ground from flying cinders.
At the same time my brother who lives Beechworth - was lucky to escape the rvages of fire because of the Greenies.
A royal commission was held.
Strangley they replanted PINES in Canberra.
It is good farming practise established 23,000 years ago in Europe to burn off in Winter.

Aborigines burnt off the forests as a hunting method to force the animals out for easy capture.
A'green pick' came through for when the Aborigines moved back next season - provided grasses for the animals.
It was not 'fire-stick farming.'

Narelle,

I was not discussing burning.

I was discussing the revival of native ingredients
as cultivated by Aboriginal people and of thinking
differently about the future of farming in Australia
and the recovery of our traditional food plants.
There are, as stated earlier, several projects
under way towards that end - in one of the links
I gave.

It's worth a read.

Again I read a myriad of contradictions and questionable 'facts'.
I don't necessarily fully accept a lot of the comments, but that aside, I wish to ask, if there have been so many different races coming down under, who is to say that these findings, artifacts or any discoveries for that matter, are those specific to the blacks?
I won't accept that the blacks can lay claim to this land, because the Poms came along, and in doing so became the next and current owners of this country.
If we have truly had people coming through from other countries to end up staying here, then why is it that there are the wannabees on this forum who wish to raise the station of the blacks from just another bunch of people living here, no more relevant or important than any previous inhabitants.
Foxy, Paul and SR, would have us believe that the blacks had some kind of mortgage on Australia, and because they were the last ones living here before England came along and 'muscled in' on them, (as they would have us believe) then we must therefore demand that all the conquerors of past, relinquish title and ownership of other lands they occupied, and return them to their previous tenants.
I am loathed to call them 'owners', as it will imply that those of us who actually do own our land because we paid for it and have a receipt to prove it, will have to acquiesce to a lie.
So then do we all agree that the blacks did not originate from Australia.
They are descendants of other races, like Africa or India.
You see by calling them aboriginal or indigenous all we are saying is that they happened to be here when we came along.
It does not mean they are a 'stand out' race from the thousands who came before them, so let's focus on the real history and stop 'cherry picking' bits that help bolster a particular agenda or dogma.
The real question we should be debating/asking is; who do these discoveries truly belong to?

Dear Narelle47;

You opined;

“Sadly the greenies moved in and stopped that - a recent result was the devastating fires IN Canberra in 2004 - my daughter's house miraculously escaped while houses 2 doors away were burnt to the ground from flying cinders.
At the same time my brother who lives Beechworth - was lucky to escape the rvages(sic) of fire because of the Greenies.”

Rubbish.

Firstly the fires were in 2003 not 2004. Secondly 'farmers burning off' didn't stop the 1938-39 fires which took out 60,000 hectares, nor the 13,000 hectare fire in 1951-52 which burnt to the urban areas of Canberra including the Stromlo pine plantation and observatory grounds, nor the 1982-83 fire which burnt for 22 days and took out 33,000 hectares.

The inquiry into the 2003 fires directly stated;

“In extreme conditions such as those experienced on 17 and 18 January—even had there been a more robust program of hazard reduction—it is highly unlikely that that the fires could have been extinguished or contained before they reached the edge of Canberra.”

You write;

“Aborigines burnt off the forests as a hunting method to force the animals out for easy capture.”

What? I think you have just made that up. Got anything to back it up?

Cont...

Cont...

This is far closer to the truth.

The vast majority of indigenous burning is done for 'healing country'. There is a vast difference between that and how white fellas have been doing it. Indigenous burning is being taught and picked up by Councils here in Victoria. I spoke to the chief fire officer about a burn which was conducted side by side using traditional methods and current ones. The indigenous burn was planned and overseen by an aboriginal chap using traditional knowledge and methods. The time of the burn was quite early in the morning. He had observed the winds two mornings in a row and knew when the change was expected to have the fire come back on its self. The fire was very low intensity, could be done without protective gear, the tall grass clumps under trees was tied in knots to prevent damage to them, and only took a couple of people to do. It progressed at a slow even pace allowing ground dwelling animals to escape it. The CFA burn was done much quicker, normally at times when personnel are available rather than the best time weather wise. It took several trucks and many crew. Whilst it was done quicker the crew was back the next day to clean up smouldering timber that only occurred in their burn due to the fire's heat.

This knowledge is being passed on and taken up by agencies tasked with fire control and dealing with fuel loads.

Perhaps you might want to go and learn more about cultural burning and traditional methods. There are plenty of resources online.

I can assist if you like.

SR,

Anyone ever called you an arrogant pr#$k?
How would you know if anyone does or doesn't burn lands to flush out animals, when I know of it personally and witnessed it, before these green morons came along.
You know very well the practice of burning was carried out, so stop pushing your know-it-all attitude onto others.
So, you are a wannabee.
Now you listen to me, through the centuries we have had in-calculable numbers of people and races moving throughout the world.
Each one learnt and left another way of doing something, whether it was fishing or hunting.
Now brainiac, if the blacks were so advanced as you and your lot want us to believe, why, oh why, was there NOTHING of note here?
Why, if you're so knowledgeable, did not they keep going on the road to progress, because according to you and your lot, you promote them to the level of Master Builders and Civil Engineers equal to todays standards.
Instead what did the early settlers find?, a bunch of half naked black people standing around on one leg all looking at each other possibly, I don't know, but that is my point, neither do you or any other 'expert', you weren't there.
They are using 'best guess' philosophy based on what they have learned to-date.
Think about it, I don't know about you, but based on what Foxy's trying to shove down our throats, If I had just landed here, based on all this, WONDERFUL technology, DISCOVERED recently, I would expect at least to see some circular or round stone or rock huts.
Wouldn't you?
Is that too much to ask?
I mean c'mon, some other race came before them built these rock huts, the blacks wiped them out, you'd think they were savvy enough to move into them and settle down, or not, but either way, they did NOTHING, they had NOTHING, so I'm sorry, all they had to do is just keep the status quo, but NO, they couldn't even do that so, NO this new evidence has NOTHING to do with the blacks!

Burning the bush is not farming. Collecting is not farming. It's also called gathering. Hunters and gatherers hunted and gathered. All of our ancestors did the same.

This is just too ridiculous. See you later.

Joe

Like some I do not read ALTRAVES posts
Like other some times you see a quick glimpse of something and just read it
BLACKS I am offended by the use of that word
Not reporting it, but know a few offensive names for Italian migrants, too know using them would be just lowering myself to his/her standards

Belly,
I suggest you learn some indigenous language so you can understand the names they call us !

Foxy -

'I was discussing the revival of native ingredients
as cultivated by Aboriginal people and of thinking
differently about the future of farming in Australia
and the recovery of our traditional food plants.'

I am aware of Pascoe encouraging some to start trying to grow some grasses.
Also in my link.
I dispute the aborigines 'cultivated' the grasses - there was no need.
Other berries and seeds have always been available and used as condiments in our coooking eg wattle seed.
They are available on my supermarket shelf.
Little protein and food value in the indigenous grasses - indeed Mitchell grass in NT would give the cattle a jolly good belly ache.

Thank you Altrav - yes - back on track please.

"It does not mean they are a 'stand out' race from the thousands who came before them, so let's focus on the real history and stop 'cherry picking' bits that help bolster a particular agenda or dogma."

Again Altrav thank you for reasoned debate.
I am not engaging with Steele as he/she has no debating or discussion skills.
"SR,

Anyone ever called you an arrogant pr#$k?
How would you know if anyone does or doesn't burn lands to flush out animals, when I know of it personally and witnessed it, before these green morons came along.
You know very well the practice of burning was carried out, so stop pushing your know-it-all attitude onto others.
So, you are a wannabee.
Now you listen to me, through the centuries we have had in-calculable numbers of people and races moving throughout the world."

Joe - me too - outta here.
Thanks for your knowledgabe input.
I keep on learning.
Fascinating stuff when people are prepared to share and dialogue in a friendly manner.

"Burning the bush is not farming. Collecting is not farming. It's also called gathering. Hunters and gatherers hunted and gathered. All of our ancestors did the same.

This is just too ridiculous. See you later."

Narelle

Hi Foxy, reading Bruce Pascoe's 'Dark Emu' at the moment, fascinating. It would be helpful if at least one of the "deniers" had glanced over the book. Maybe more to their liking is the 1951 edition of Charles P Mountford's 'Brown Men and Red Sand', I have an old copy. By today's standards 'Brown Men and Red Sand' is a most condescending and patronising publication, all about Mountford's encounters with the primitive savages of Central Australia. Mountford certainly was a man of his times.

Mountford certainly was a man of his times.
Paul1405,
As you are one of your times !

Paul, I'm confused.
Are you saying Mountford was condescending and patronising?, or was he a man of his times.
I thought the statement, a 'man of his times' was a complement.
I'm not criticising, just my inability to understand what appears, initially, to be a contradiction, can you clarify please?

ALTRAV, "man for his times" is not compliment or a criticism, it simply reflects the accepted thinking or practice at that particular period.
ALTRAV, glad to hear you are your normal self, CONFUSED. BTW, Hitler was described that way by Time Mag, when they made him their man of the year in 1938.

You didn't give me the goss on your trip back to the old country, did you visit the shrine of the Great One, did you get to hang upside down in the village square like he did? I hope so

Belly, I'm sorry if you find the word 'blacks' offensive.
I only offend people when there is a need to do so, for some indiscretion they have provoked.
Please do not take offence because none was intended.
In fact I have been curbing my language over time to specifically try to convey an appropriate response without too much abuse, and I do mean 'too' much abuse, as opposed to what I did previously.
As for the word 'black', I have always known that to be an appropriate word, just as we are called 'white'.
Also to clarify further, the reason I refrain, (haven't completely stopped) using the word 'abo' is not because of any racist tendencies but because I ran the risk of being censured by the very people who think they are better than me or know better than me.
The real reason is, I can't be bothered writing the word aborigine, just like I do with 'all' my writing, like Aussie rather than Australian and so on, is because I have always abbreviated words where possible, so let it be known, if I want to abuse someone or vilify or call them one thing or another, I will.
As I have always said I do not believe in PC and I most certainly do not accept censorship.
So Belly relax, I am a measured guy and have a reasonable amount of pragmatism and objectivity thereby allowing me a certain amount of flexibility on the subject of racism and bigotry over the next guy.
So if I decide to call someone out, you can 'bet your balls', it was warranted or justified.

Good Morning Everyone,

I would like to Thank all who have contributed
to my discussion. It's certainly been a robust one.

For anyone interested in learning more about
the innovative thinking and investigation into
the land use of Aboriginal people - this work has
begun by researchers such as Rupert Gerritsen,
Bill Gammage, Beth Gott, Jeanette Hope, Harry Allen,
John Blay, Tim Allen, and others.

Their work will challenge almost everything we have so
far assumed about Australian pre-colonial history.

The information and research is there for people to find.
One only needs the desire to want to look. Bruce Pascoe
has entire chapters written on agriculture and fire
management in his book, "Dark Emu," and it makes
very informative reading. For those interested in
explanations backed by evidence.

Enjoy your day.

Paul, no I make an appalling tourist so even though I enjoy the food and the scenery, I've travelled the world enough in my day.
No these trips from now on are for the good wife as was agreed years ago, work, kids, schooling, then once they move on she can have the run of the world and with all the weight of the family and day to day responsibilities diminished (not completely gone) she is free to plan as many trips/cruises she wishes, and I'm under strict orders not to die until she is well and truly toured out.
So thanks for asking, I hope you're still awake, didn't mean to go on.

Dear Narelle47,

You write;

“Fascinating stuff when people are prepared to share and dialogue in a friendly manner.”

You forgot the word genuine. Firstly it helps if you do not misrepresent yourself as a first time poster when you weren't. Secondly if you are going to attack someone like Pascoe you need to have at least read his book. Thirdly if you assert something and then when challenged you refuse to even attempt to back things up but instead say you are not engaging because “he/she has no debating or discussion skills” it sends the very obvious signal the cupboard is bare.

There is absolutely no problem with having entrenched views, hell I have them in spades, but I come here to have mine challenged. Those challenges need to be substantive. I am always up for learning more when having to defend my positions. For instance in the course of the debate on Falou I felt what had been done to him was unjust and an overreach.

Now it was your entrenched view that it was the 'Greenies wot done the Canberra fires'. I quoted from the findings of the very extensive investigations into that fire which said it wasn't. Did that really have any chance of causing you to change your view on the matter? If it did then it becomes a dialogue. If it didn't then you are just here to have your prejudices validated by the likes of ALTRAV although chasing him down his rabbit warrens must be a task. Here is a word to the wise, don't get too strident or 'uppity' because he has a tendency to 'those kind of women' maggots.

Dear Foxy,

Thank you for raising the topic. The World Heritage listing is for something which is entirely a product of Australian Aborigines. That is certainly something to celebrate.

Dear Paul,

Bruce Pascoe's book really is fascinating.
I'm learning so much.

Dear Belly,

Thank You for continuing to brighten my day.

Dear Steele,

I was so excited when I heard the news about Budj Bim
being added to the World Heritage List. It certainly
is worth celebrating. It's a great way pf acknowledging
our history. A good place to start.

SR, thankfully you are not an authority on anything that matters and it's good to see you are willing to learn, because you conduct yourself as a 'know it all', so given the fact that you have to research your comments, tells us that you are willing to learn.
Now my calling 'those kinds of women maggots', is quite appropriate, if you had any inkling of what it means.
You sir, have been neutered and so it is that your opinion on the topic of women is moot.
You see judging by what I read of Narelle47, she is in fact, 'my kind of woman'.
So again you fail in your attempt at virtue shaming, and anyway, have you not learned yet, even though you say you are prepared to learn, that I have no shame, you cannot virtue shame me nor intimidate me, I enjoy a good stoush.
Now to educate you some more.
Based on the evidence supplied and on the record, there have been thousands, (I doubt if millions) that have come down from lands above us and all manner of races precede the blacks (sorry Belly) so these latest findings are more than likely from previous inhabitants that were wiped out by the blacks.
If these findings were from the blacks, then where is the link or in fact any evidence today of any correlation between the two?
There is none, so their not connected.

Foxy,

Since I was the first to mention Sturt in this thread and specifically talked of having read his journals previously, perhaps just regurgitating what Pascoe tells you about Sturt's journeys is superfluous.

The problem with this type of reasoning is that its back-to-front. Pascoe has started with the answer and then looked for the data. I know that's how Foxy, SR et al work, but it isn't how the search for truth works.

Pascoe, desperate to find instances of aboriginals living well on the wild grains they find, cherry-picks Sturt and other data. He finds those passages that support his views and the Foxy's of the world think they are representative of what Sturt found. But passages from Sturt like these won't be considered as relevant.

* "In many places the natives have but a scanty and precarious subsistence,.."

* "One great cause of the deaths amongst the Aborigines is their liability to pulmonary diseases from being constantly in the water. They are much annoyed by rain, nor will any thing induce them to stir during wet weather, but they sit shivering in their huts even in the height of summer. There is no people in the world so unprovided against inclemency or extremes of weather as they are. They have literally nothing to cover them, to protect them from the summer heat or the winter's cold; nor would any charity be greater than to supply these poor people with clothing."

(It should also be noted that the people who feed Sturt from their great bounty (yes, that's sarcasm) were among the first to settle on the edge of homesteads established in their area so as to access the flour supplies available. Indeed many Europeans died at the hands of aboriginal parties who sought to steal their flour supplies - a stange thing to happen if they were all such wondrous farmers.)

/cont

/cont

The problem is the extension of logic based on nothing other than hope. Some groups utilise the great bounty in their region and its then assumed this is standard for most groups. A few manage fish supplies and its insinuated this applies across the continent.

But to see how insne and illogical this is, take the issue of cannibalism. Sturt talks several times of some groups practising it. Using the same logic as that of Budj Bin are we to infer that this applied to most groups. Someone should write a book destroying the myth that most natives weren't cannibals. (sarcasm again). Would such a book find a publisher?

Foxy goes on about Pascoe winning many awards. Its true, but not for his history. Historians aren't taking this seriously. Its based on a biased reading of information that's been available for decades. It has no historic accuracy. But it is political valuable and in less informed circles will be accepted as valid.

Its not just Sturt that's being distorted. Books by people like William Buckley who lived with the Wadawurrung tribe for 30 years wrote extensively about his time with them. He talkstheir warfare and misogyny but never, as I recall, about any agricultural habits of the tribe. real truth-seekers would put great store by his writings. But, because he's not telling the approved twist, he's ignored.

Yet, even with all this distortion, more still is needed. So words have to be manipulated. So now people like SR insist that throwing a few seeds on the ground each time you're passing by is "agriculture". "Farming" is gathering wild seeds. Words get distorted and then the claim is made that agriculture and farming occurred here just like elsewhere in the world. But anyone with the least honesty, knows that what happened around the Nile and the Euphrates was worlds apart from what happened around the Murray.

But Pascoe is telling people what they want to hear, and they won't and don't dare look at his facts too closely. He'll be a passing fade and then the facts will reassert themselves.

BLACKS I am offended by the use of that word
Belly,
what about Whites ?

Dear mhaze,

Buckley speaks of the incredible kindness he was shown by the Wathaurung during his time with them. It is in many ways a touching story including Buckley's reluctance to leave them even when the opportunity to reconnect with those of his kind.

As to some Aboriginals engaging in cannibalism Buckley relates;

“It is true they are cannibals - I have seen them eat small portions of the flesh of their adversaries slain in Battle - they appeared to do this not from any particular partiality for human flesh - but from the impression that that by eating their enemies they would themselves become more able warriors - many of them are disgusted with this ceremony and refusing to eat, merely rub their bodies with a small portion of fat as a charm equally efficient”

This isn't the same as the eating of human flesh by the survivors of the Batavia for instance.

Sturt too speaks well of those whom he encountered on the Murray; “Here are broad instances of honesty that would do credit to any civilized nation.” and before the Frontier Wars started in earnest he remarks “All I can say is that they have submitted to our occupation of their country with a forbearance that commands our best sympathies.”

Next you sat this statement out on its own;

“One great cause of the deaths amongst the Aborigines is their liability to pulmonary diseases from being constantly in the water. They are much annoyed by rain, nor will any thing induce them to stir during wet weather, but they sit shivering in their huts even in the height of summer.”

These were people on the Murray who were constantly in the water fishing thus likely to be often cold even in summer.

“The fish-hooks they procure from the Europeans are valued by them beyond measure, since they prevent the necessity of their being constantly in the water, and you now see the river, at the proper season, lined by black anglers, and the quantity of fish they take is really astonishing”

Distortions indeed.

My point in raising Buckley is that he's journal doesn't help the narrative that Pascoe et al are trying to create, therefore he's ignored.

"This isn't the same as the eating of human flesh by the survivors of the Batavia for instance."
OK! So what? Did you utterly miss my point or were you just trying to change it. I'll try again. Picking out selective quotes from Sturt to advance the narrative is dishonest and an utter distortion. I was illustrating how that game is played by showing how a selective quote from Sturt could be used in the same way as Pascoe uses his selective quotes to try to show the entire race as cannibals...which they weren't. Do try to keep up with the rest of the class.

"These were people on the Murray who were constantly in the water fishing thus likely to be often cold even in summer."

Except what he was talking about were people who hadn't the wherewithal to protect themselves from the rain and suffered thereby. It was right in the quote in my post. Yet you cherry-pick my quote from the very post you are critiquing. How dumb is that?

Look. Again, I'm not saying the aboriginals weren't somewhat effective at what they did. They were primitive stone-age peoples and probably as advanced as many other stone-age peoples but less so than many others. But this notion that finding that one group did this-or-that means that this was an aboriginal trait is historically and logically invalid. In the main they were nomads and no amount of sleight-of-hand will alter that fact.

mhaze, SR is basically chasing semantics.
His response should have been, 'OK so they were cannibals, but not to the extent that they chose to eat humans as part of their usual diet; BUT they DID eat human flesh, so by definition and in truth, they WERE, cannibals.
I don't think there is a threshold that quantifies how much human flesh you must eat before you can be classified as a cannibal.
What I would like to caution all of you about is that after following all the debates and submissions by everyone, and I try to read them all, I find that the 'experts' are not always right.
It fortuitously reinforces my belief that all the research and results under the sun are sometimes or more often than not, 'best guess' scenario's.
Like this latest epiphany, that the blacks were the authors of these rock huts.
I have no doubt it was early travelers who decided to settle, but it is not the work of the aboriginals that you all so really wished it was.
You know you are a racist lot, suggesting that the Aussie natives need some kind of recognition because as they are now they are an un-assuming and un-inspiring lot, lacking any distinction or merit.
How about stop trying to raise their profile and world standings.
They are what they are and if that means they lack any qualities of distinction or merit, so be it, they are still human and don't have to prove anything to you lot or any other busy-body for that matter.
If they wanted to prove something the evidence would be there, and we would have seen it as early as the first settlers, and we would not have to go 'searching' for any because it had been known all along and therefore was obvious.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves, yes you all know who I'm talking about.

// In the main they (Aboriginal people) were nomads and no amount of sleight-of-hand will alter that fact.//

mhaze, there is no evidence to support that what so ever, in fact the evidence is that at the time of European settlement, and there after, most tribes encountered by Europeans were settled people.

mhaze what evidence do you have to support your claim. Certainly when Phillip arrived in 1788 he found the people of the Sydney region, well settled and in no way nomads.

Paul, what is YOUR definition of settled?
Or better still, which definition would you prefer?
There are more than one, if you look it up.
One can be settled in a country, or in a neighborhood, or in a house, or in a bush hut, or in an area under the stars.
Do you follow?
It might be considered the opposite to transient, but again one would have to be careful, because one can still be settled in a section of Australia and still be transient within that section.
And I mean something the size of a cattle station or similar.

Dear mhaze,

You are misrepresenting the debate. Pascoe is pushing back through the use of explorer diaries against the notion that all aborigines were nomadic. You are now saying he is claiming none were. I have read his book and it doesn't prosecute that argument at all.

However he says that the perceptions of a wholly nomadic race are wrong and he backs it up with first hand accounts.

“These journals reveal a much more complicated Aboriginal economy than the primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle we had been told was the simple lot of Australia's First People.”

Who after reading the first hand records he gathers in his book would disagree with that?

Equally you can't claim that “In the main they were nomads and no amount of sleight-of-hand will alter that fact.” because it isn't a proven fact at all. You don't present any evidence to support a notion that ultimately better allows justification for the extensive land theft which occurred.

and still be transient within that section.
ALTRAV,
Yes, once a place was saturated with landmines etc. camp was shifted to cleaner areas until it was over-used again & camp was shifted again & again. Calling that nomadic is an overkill but calling it settled is too ! Once a place got too messy they moved a few miles. Eventually, they returned to former camp sites & the whole process repeated !
Even animals move on once an area is grazed out ! It makes perfect sense.

"You are now saying he is claiming none were [nomadic]."

When did I say that?

Who after reading the first hand records he gathers in his book would disagree with that?
SteeleRedux,
So, because YOU happen to like something you suddenly agree with first-hand reports ?

MHaze - we can only hope - Pascoe is entrenched in the psyche of many and especially education - so it will be many, many years.

"But Pascoe is telling people what they want to hear, and they won't and don't dare look at his facts too closely. He'll be a passing fade and then the facts will reassert themselves."
Posted by mhaze, Friday, 12 July 2019 1:24:16 PM

Researchers Christopher Johnson and Barry Brook from the James Cook University and the University of Adelaide have developed a new population growth model for the Aboriginal population of Australia. Australia’s Aboriginal population grew rapidly over the last 3500 years and could have continued to grow had European settlement not occurred, the research shows.

“It’s the first time we have evidence that a hunter gatherer society can experience large scale increases in population density. Usually that is done in societies that feature agriculture. There’s also evidence that Aborigines were becoming more sedentary. There’s evidence in Victoria that they were developing elements of an agricultural society. So it’s possible that the population increase could have continued were it not for the introduction of Europeans.” said Professor Brook.

mhaze,

You stated that Bruce Pascoe did not receive awards
for "his history." And inferred that he's not to be
taken seriously.

The Judges, NSW Premier's Literary Awards gave Bruce
Pascoe's book, "Dark Emu" both the Book of the Year
Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize
in the 2016 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

They also stated that:

"This vital book demonstrates with convincing evidence
often from early explorer's journals, that the Aboriginal
peoples lived settled and sophisticated lives here for
millennia before Cook..."

And -

"Bruce Pascoe is without peer in his field. "Dark Emu is
essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what
Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed
the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation."

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

Shame on you Foxy, you have an unfair advantage on the poor old Deniers including mhaze, you have actually read the book. Joe does not read anything that conflicts with his "first sources", doesn't want to think badly of the author.

Why on earth do you people go on so much about nothing.
You all take other people's word for everything, because someone says things like 'peer reviewed' and 'other experts agree', as if these people are right because no-one dares challenge them.
All throughout history, books have been found to have, anything from exaggerations to outright lie's.
Knowing this, no one, including none of you brainiacs, can tell me which parts of the books are true, which are false and which are simply embellishments, designed to serve some literary purpose.
So Foxy, try and conjur up some of your 'expert' response to that comment.

Hey Paul,

You might appreciate this joke:

Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Heaven God went
missing for six days. Eventually Michael the Archangel
found Him on the seventh day, resting.

Michael inquired of God, "Where have you been?"
God sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction and proudly
pointed downwards through the clouds,
"Look Michael, look what I've made,"" said God.

Michael looked puzzled. "What is it?"

"It's a planet," God replied. "And I've put Life on it.
I'm going to call it Earth, and it's going to be a great
place of balance."

"Balance?"Michael was still confused.

God explained pointing to the different parts of Earth.
"For example North America will be a place of great
opportunity and wealth, South America will be poor.
The Middle East will be a hot spot. Russia a cold spot.
Over there - a continent of White people, and over there
one of Black people." God continued pointing to the
different countries. "This one will be extremely hot, and
this one will be cold and covered with ice."

The Archangel was impressed with God's work. He then
pointed to two land masses and asked, "What's that one?"

"Ah," said God. " That one is New Zealand. The most
gorgeous place on earth. There are beautiful lakes,
rivers, streams, and mountains. The people from New
Zealand are going to be modest, intelligent, humourous,
and found travelling all over the world. They'll be
extremely sociable, hard working, high achieving and will
be known for their diplomacy and as carriers of peace."

" But what about balance, God?" asked the Archangel.
"You promised balance?"

"Wait until you see the wa##ers I'm putting next to them in
Australia," God replied.

Foxy,

"They also stated that:

"This vital book demonstrates with convincing evidence
often from early explorer's journals, that the Aboriginal
peoples lived settled and sophisticated lives here for
millennia before Cook..."

You unwittingly point to one of the flaws in the argument "...millennia before Cook..."

For thousands of years?

Is Mise,

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/dig-finds-evidence-of-aboriginal-habitation-up-to-80000-years-ago

And -

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-21/brooke-boney-road-back-home-cultural-preservation-in-australia/9269956

Well then, aboriginals were successfully building their own houses for thousands of years, why did they change that success story for one of abysmal failure of today's comparison with Government housing.

The government's Home Ownership on Indigenous Land program spend A$10 million on administration to provide A$2.7 million for just 15 loans. The program's target were 460 loans.

Dan

Foxy, bulldust!
Again with the references.
Well you can bag me as much as you like, that's not going to EVER make me or anyone else with even the least bit of knowledge accept some of the stupid and rediculous numbers and so called facts, being thrown around by some people.
OK to make just one observation on the 60,000 to 80,000 year myth even try to stand up, tell me then where is all the evidence of all these 'wonders' these 'extremely intelligent' and 'capable' people lived by way back then?
If you are right they are supposed to have ascended to a level of social standing second to none compared to the developed world today.
According to you and your mates they had sophisticated systems of agriculture, aquaculture, farming, and lived in structures we would call houses today.
Apparently we have found evidence of sea going creatures in the central Australian desserts, even evidence of some form of dinosaur, but nowhere, nowhere is there ANY evidence of your womderous blacks to be found, and don't you dare bring up these rock circle findings, we have already debunked that stupid attempt at glorifying your black mates.
Foxy, in YOUR mind, you keep trying to put these people on pedestals and I'll keep knocking them down, back to earth, into reality and out of your mind and world of fantasy.

If what I write offends you

1) I'm sorry.

2) It won 't happen again.

3) 1 & 2 are both lies.

4) You're a wa**er!

LOL.

Here's some more food for thought:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/01/bruce-pascoe-teach-your-children-to-rebel-teach-your-children-to-doubt?page=with%3Aimg-2

Here is the Budj Bim Master plan:

http://www.monodesign.com.au/work/budj-bim-master-plan

As stated earlier the Andrews government has committed
millions for preserving and promoting Aboriginal
Heritage and in large part to complete the Master Plan for
Budj Bim in anticipation of an increase in global
attention to the World Heritage listing will bring.

Click on the site viewing - it looks impressive.

Foxy,

"This vital book demonstrates with convincing evidence
often from early explorer's journals, that the Aboriginal
peoples lived settled and sophisticated lives here for
millennia before Cook..."

You don't get it, do you?

How could explorers' journals from the mid-1800s shew something that existed thousands of years before Cook; all that the journals shew is what their writers observed.

Is that what I've paid taxes for all my life, to keep producing morons of that calibre ?

il Duce,

As a recent decedent of barbarians yourself, you find it hard to equate your racists attitudes with reality. Whilst your recent ancestors were hacking each other to death, Aboriginal people in Australia were living peaceful settled lives. Many, not all, were engaged in agriculture, living a bountiful fulfilled existence. Sadly at the same time your crowd were engaged in the most despicable acts of barbarism, the hoards from the north! In about 1,000 years or so your's may reach the same level of sophistication Aboriginal people were able to achieve for thousands of years before the European invasion, nothing would please me more. BTW what year did you invade?

Is Mise,

You're the one who doesn't get it.

Read the book. Pascoe gives his sources.
They are from more than just explorers.
So stop nit picking.

Dear Paul,

Love your work!

Paul, don't try to make yourself look credible.
Like your running mates, you lack credibility more often than not.
You, like your ilk, rely on deflection, when faced with a lack of relevant answers to even respond to a real challenge.
Forget about MY ancestors, I think history shows where even the worst and least impressive of them, outshone anything your lot had to offer, not only then, but still today as well.
So cut the crap, like Foxy, she too has demonstrated she has been defeated by her despondent laced, lackluster retort, on page 29.
Will you guys never learn,I grew up with bigotry and racism and more as a daily routine.
If I could take it then, you know I can more than take it now, for I learnt to sense the measure of a man (or female) and like you two, you have been found wanting.
Now there's a good chap, don't waste these precious postings on me, I suggest you rethink your assessment of me and focus on the topics at hand, and DO try to be more objective and mature about your comments, and get rid of the excessive subjectivity.
FOXY, you've been beaten so stop wasting your time.
If you want to get back at me or put me down, stop printing bias, and idolatry tripe, and start thinking pragmatically.
The way you write is as if to worship everyone you present to us is sickening and wrong.
No-one has the right to overstate a persons standing without evidence, not those who simply speak of their praise for someone and their ability.
You come across as a fool or as the persons mother.
Mothers have always idolised their children, who can do no wrong, and every pathetic thing they do is built up and out of all proportion.
Sound familiar, remind you of anyone?
So turn it down a notch!

Paul/Foxy in the end racism comes for the most part from the uneducated
We see some here, but should an Aboriginal win Gold or top shorting honors? they are ours!
The thread tells of farming six thousand years ago
And some if not in words clearly in thought do not want to know about it
Yet if it was about say Eskimos [who lived similar lives] it would be believed without trouble

iL Duce, its impossible to take anything you say seriously, coming across as a self indulgent opinionated blowhard in the way you do. This discussion just highlights your pompous attitude towards those that refuse to accept you as the "infallible one" (are you the Pope). The fact you have not read a single word of Pascoe's book is immaterial to you, why, because you and no one else knows the real truth. Maybe you could organise a book burning, where Pascoe's, and other unapproved "rubbish", can be disposed of in the way it should be. After all if it does not conform to "your thinking" how on earth could it possible be correct.

Take a tip, you probably don't know where your local library is, but in the off chance you do why not borrow a book, even if its only Peppa Pigs 'Bedtime Stories for Little Ones' it will go a long way towards broadening your knowledge of this world.

Foxy,

If the learned gentlemen said that which you quote then they are revealed as fools or in need of a competent proofreader, there is no way that the observations of explorers of the 1840s or so can validate claims about thousands of years before Cook,one doesn't need to read the book to label such a claim as fatuous.

It is stupid claims such as this that give ammunition to the doubters and to point out this fact is not nitpicking.

Belly,

"The thread tells of farming six thousand years ago
And some if not in words clearly in thought do not want to know about it
Yet if it was about say Eskimos [who lived similar lives] it would be believed without trouble"

Where would the Eskimos have farmed?

The next day, the Bears family arose in the customary fashion. Mother made the porridge as was usual in the small bare two storied house.
And Father bear in his gruff voice, issued his command to march out into the forest and search for blackberries suitably ripe, to adorn the three bowls of porridge left cooling on the kitchen table.

"Mommy", cried baby bear, as she clung to his/her mothers mitten, with a look of terrror in his/her eyes, " Will the naughty policeman take daddy away again for calling blackberries blackberries; I love their new name mommy, coloured berries makes them taste so much nicer, don't you think mommy " ?

Father bear suddenly stopped. Spying a frightened fox skulking behind a tree. Mother bear moved quickly beside father bear, and they continued to stare in suprise at the condition of the poor animal.

More evidence the white knights are invading our forest, said father bear to mother bear.
Cousin black bear saw a white blond child running ragged in our forest only yesterday, Father bear continued.

Mother bear looked frightened. And casting a furtive glance at her sibling wide eyed innocent child, continued in conversation with father bear.
Is it the great white knight Altrav in our beautiful forest again? Asked mother bear of father bear.

I do believe the whites are staging a takeover. Said father most concerned.

Only yesterday, cousin black bear saw a white blond girl talking to a white rabbit at a party deeper in our forest.

Oh dear said mother bear, then best we be making tracks back to our beautiful isolated home for breakfast?

More tomorrow children, as we examine the continuing story of a blissful life of ignorance in the deep dark forest with the tree bears.

Dan.

Paul the frustrating difference between myself and you and your mates is that you are prepared to believe 'everything, without question', where-as I am not.
If you truly are a mature man of some years, you should be more diligent with a strong sense of skepticism.
Now YOU and your running mates might be comfortable with your level of naivety and gullibility, but I am not.
The problem is that you lot have had your head in books for way too long and not enough time in the 'real' world.
In reference to the topic we are currently debating, if you wish to accept this event, that is your choice, but if you are truly honest with yourself, using the information you already know on this topic, you should be reacting with questions and not with compliance.
You read something and say WOW, how exciting.
I read the same thing and say WOW, really?
The difference is you believe things unequivocally, I do not.
If I 'feel' something is not right, I look further.
The idea of 'feeling' something is a subconscious phenomenon therefore is a natural manifestation and devoid of any form of intervention or agenda.
We all have this sense, instinctively, even you Paul, the difference is you suppress yours and prefer to go with a third party's version of events rather than question them, even though your 'gut' might say otherwise.
Your attitude is a dangerous concept, you will forever succumb to Charlestons and con-men.
My attitude, on the other hand, has kept me in good stead and made me a more aware and viable person.
Anyway, as I have already said, don't waste your precious posting allocation, to bag me, I grew up with much worse than you or your lot could EVER have the imagination to dream up.

If you truly are a mature man of some years,
ALTRAV,
I think he's just a High School kid or junior public servant whose swingers haven't even dropped yet !

Hi Paul -

QUOTE:

il Duce,

As a recent decedent of barbarians yourself, you find it hard to equate your racists attitudes with reality. Whilst your recent ancestors were hacking each other to death, Aboriginal people in Australia were living peaceful settled lives. Many, not all, were engaged in agriculture, living a bountiful fulfilled existence. Sadly at the same time your crowd were engaged in the most despicable acts of barbarism, the hoards from the north! In about 1,000 years or so your's may reach the same level of sophistication Aboriginal people were able to achieve for thousands of years before the European invasion, nothing would please me more. BTW what year did you invade?
Posted by Paul1405, Saturday, 13 July 2019 10:27:33 PM'

Peaceful settled lives - you don't have to read many of the early explorers writings that the tribes were anything but peaceful.
It was the nature of stone age survival to have intertribal warfare and cannibalism;infanticide;genocide - all stone age people did it.
It is still happening in PNG in 2019.
However...
Check this work in progress of the murdering of whites.
From pre settlement in 1788.
Shipwrecks were a ready made pantry.
1606 1 Unnamed sailor Carpentier River From the ship Duyfken. Killed by missiles from the blacks. https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/a397223.txt
1606 Unnamed sailor 1 Cape Keerweer Duyfken. (9 UNNAMED SAILORS) https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/218805405
1606 Unnamed sailor 2 Cape Keerweer From the ship Duyfken. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/218805405

https://australianhistory972829073.wordpress.com/

@ Paul1405

To whom are you addressing as Il Duce?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=il%20duce

Foxy wrote..."You stated that Bruce Pascoe did not receive awards for "his history."

Nup. What I said was that the awards he got were not history awards ie that he is not being taken seriously in history circles. Things like the NSW Literary awards are normally given out for fiction...which seems about right here also.

Paul wrote..." ..in fact the evidence is that at the time of European settlement, and there after, most tribes encountered by Europeans were settled people. "

That's utter rubbish unless you want to torture the word 'settled'. A nomad is someone without a fixed dwelling. Sturt, for example, didn't come across any tribes with fixed dwellings. One tribe he found that had what he called 'huts' (probably lean-to) thought so little of them that they immediately burnt them on seeing Sturt's party.

Foxy wrote of ALTRAV..." 4) You're a wa**er!"

He's a waiter? It couldn't have been the other word because Foxy abhors abuse on this site and wouldn't want to be seen as an utter hypocrite.

Dear Narelle47,

Firstly good to see you didn't mean it when you picked up your bat and ball.

Secondly well done on providing some sources for your assertions as fraught as they are.

In fact they prove exactly the opposite to what you would like.

This was the encounter when 8 sailors were killed;

“One night, the sound of pounding drums was heard so the following day Janszoon and Rosengeyn decided to dispatch a boat crew to try and make contact with the unseen inhabitants. Drumming recommenced as the boat came to a halt on the muddy shoreline and the 12 men struggled through a mangrove swamp to a clearing. The drumming abruptly stopped - it was an uneasy silence for the men.

Suddenly, and without warning, the forest erupted into a frenzy and before the men could lift their muskets to fire, dozens of fearsome natives fired a hail of arrows - 8 of the men lay dead or dying. The 4 remaining sailors were quick to fire their muskets but, panic-stricken, staggered back towards the boat. Still loading and firing, they freed the boat from the muddy shoreline and rowed furiously back to their ship. The crew were stunned by the suddenness of the tragedy.”

After which;

“he sailed away from the coastline, heading further south in search of an open passage through to the Pacific. It was dangerous work as the area is a maze of small islands, outcrops and reefs. Finally the channel appeared between the mainland and islands. He attempted to chart and sail through the opening but the current was flowing with such violence that he was unable to make headway.”

This was Torres Strait.

“He contented himself by swinging south again, passing an island he charts as Frederick Hendrick Island.”

“As dawn breaks on the new year of 1606, the landscape had changed dramatically - it was now barren and grey. Janszoon raised his telescope to look at this foreboding land – could it be part of Terra Australis - the Great South Land that scholars speculated upon?”

Cont..

Cont..

Now this is obviously Australia. So what happens?

“He sailed and charted nearly 300 miles of shoreline however with provisions running drastically low, he turned about at a point he charts as Cape Keerweer – Cape Turnaround. They sailed back up the charted coast, past their original landfall, eventually coming to a river mouth Janszoon named Batavia River.”

“It was at this river that Janszoon made the decision to accompany a longboat crew who rowed up the estuary in search of a desperately needed food source. As Janszoon and crew were negotiating the narrowing river, ominous black tribesmen seemingly appeared from nowhere. Fearful of another massacre, the crew started firing into the gathering tribe, wounding some of the startled natives. They immediately retaliated by propelling their long spears towards the boat, fatally wounding one of the oarsmen. Willem shouted frantically to his men to turn about as he fired off his pistols. With all speed they made it back to the Duyfken.”
http://www.vochistory.org.au/duyfken.html

Drums and bows and arrows, north of Torres Strait – obviously New Guinea

Tribesmen with spears south of Torres Strait – Australia

So without provocation they opened fire on Australian Aborigines and you are trying to make the case that it was the Aborigines who were the savages? Doesn't fly I'm afraid.

Once again congratulations for now attempting to back your claims up with sources. Perhaps now you will take the next step and make sure they are supporting the point you are trying to put. We will make a decent contributor of you yet.

Of course my sources or version could be wrong so are definitely worth review. That is dialogue.

Talking about the truth of Australia's history?

Shooting, poisonings and children driven off cliffs.
This is a record of state-sanctioned slaughter in
a special report in the Guardian which tells us
that the truth of Australia's history has long been
hiding in plain sight.

The stories of the "killing times"are the ones we have
heard in secret or told in hushed tones. They are not
stories that appear in our history books yet they refuse to
go away.

The colonial journalist, and barrister
Richard Windeyer called\it "the whispering in
the bottom of our hearts."The anthropologist
William Stanner described a national "cult of forgetfulness."

A 1927 royal commission lamented our "conspiracy of silence."

But calls now are growing for a national truth telling process.
Such wishes are expressed in the Uluru Statement from the
Heart.

Reconciliation Australia's 2019 barometer of attitudes to
Indigenous peoples found 80% of people considered truth
telling important. Almost 70% of Australians accept
that Aboriginal people were subject to mass killings,
incarceration, and forced removal from land, and
their movement was restricted. The frontier wars and how
massacres spread with colonisation are given in the
following link:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/04/the-killing-times-the-massacres-of-aboriginal-people-australia-must-confront

mhaze,

The meaning, usage, and cultural significance of the word
" wa**er" needs to be understood. Our society values
tolerance and open-mindedness. The word you seem to
have had in
mind - is a socially
levelling term and it ridicules a person who is
pretentious, arrogant and intolerant. However, your
assumption could also be wrong. I might have been referring
to a different word all together. Such as - Waster, warder,
wafter, wacker, or wagger - to name just a few.

Also once again, for your information - the NSW Premier's
Literary Awards have many categories. Not just for fiction.
Bruce Pascoe won the "Book of the Year" award for his
" rigorous, thorough, historic, interrogation of our past..."

He has also won the Australia Council Award for Life Time
Achievement and life long contribution to Australian
writing having published more than 20 Adult and children's
titles. He is not a passing fad as you suggest.

As soon as the funding runs short, the history-invention bandwagon will slow down & all will be good again.

Yes Foxy, I'm sure you meant one of those other words and not wank3r.
Seriously!

As to Pascoe's awards, I suspect you are deliberately missing the point as point is something you'd prefer to miss. Pascoe hasn't received awards or even praise from historical groups because his theory, for want of a better term, isn't accepted or even considered. Its part of a now established genre of pseudo-history - reach a conclusion then look for a few facts to guile the ignorant while ignoring the great body of evidence that the ignorant are ignorant of.

mhaze,

Thirty judges had the difficult task of narrowing
down a record number of entries for the NSW
Premier's Literary Awards in 2016. They eventually
selected "Dark Emu" as Book of The Year.

It was considered ground breaking and a book that
rewrote Australian history and today it continues to
win awards, inspire projects and change the
conversation. To quote the Judges - "Here's an
opportunity to learn real history and learn your
country and what makes it tick."

A new version for children has been published in
June and is now available at all schools.

What do you call a group of wa**ers?

A handful.

Cheers.

Foxy,

Those thirty judges, are they the same people who think that explorers' journals from the 19th Century give an insight into Aboriginal life thousands of years before Cook?

If they are then the "W" word applies to them in spades.

Dear Is Mise and mhaze,

Stop being so bloody petulant. While it is true that Pascoe does not have qualifications as an historian Bill Gammage certainly does and he is very much on the same songbook.

"Gammage is determined to open our eyes to the fact that in 1788 there was no wilderness, but a landscape that reflected a sophisticated, successful and sensitive farming regime integrated across the Australian landmass. Fire was not an indiscriminate tool of fuel reduction or grass promotion, but carefully employed to ensure certain plants and animals flourished, to facilitate access and rotation, and to ensure resources were abundant, convenient and predictable."
The Monthly

Gammage is a multi-award winning historian.

Steely, Steely, Steely, you keep trying, and believe me you are trying.
I've just had a glance at your Mr Bill Grammage, and your trying it on again.
You see I was prepared to consider his claims, because you gave him such a grandiose ovation that I was compelled to lower my guard given that your commendation led me to believe we may have been discussing the existence of an omnipotent.
It turns out your adulation is a little premature and in doubt.
You see, he makes statements, claims and comments on things he cannot possibly have witnessed, and added to that I noticed no references of repute, or at least I could not see references to diaries or log-books of anyone who actually sighted and reported on what he writes as being factual accounts of the time.
Now in all fairness, there might be some evidence of what I speak or seek, so I will refrain from further comment on this man and his work on our local black friends.

Foxy, Looooove your work, I can see you are finally reaching out for help and stepping outside into my world, where you are certain to broaden your education and knowledge about the 'real' world, which you were so desperately lacking.
Give us some more gutter talk, it is so refreshing seeing it come from you.
At a girl, looking forward to your next serve.
Keep it up.

Have to laugh, three posters desperately looking for something to be offended about
And trying just as desperately to convince us the eel traps do not prove Aboriginals did not wander around blindly waiting for us to come and take their country from them
Sad funny, but truly bleek too

Belly, so does this mean you've found evidence to support your take on the position of the black fella's and their superior agricultural and aquaculture skills thousands of years ago?
I am keen to learn of these worthy achievements when one considers how they presented themselves then and still today.
I can only speculate that the first white settlers must not have delved deep enough into the bush, when they first arrived, then apparently the blacks destroyed any evidence of their prowess in all fields of an advanced culture to fool anyone into believing they were just another rabble of nomadic transients or drifters.
I must admit Belly, they did an exceptional job in fooling everyone.
Although I might suggest, they don't need to keep up the facade anymore, we now know the truth, so they can go back to their advanced way of life once more and they can go back to being self sufficient and ease the burden of welfare and charity on the rest of us, or at least redirect it to those who really need it.
If it's true they were once such an advanced culture, that is.

Steele,

What's petulant about asking how explorers journals have any insight into Aboriginal life thousands of years before Cook?

Do you think that explorers' journals from the 19th Century do so?

Belly,

For our sake, if not your own, get one of the free spell checkers.

Is Mise,

You continue to nit-pick.

Bruce Pascoe used more than just the sources
of explorers.

Read the book.

Issy, I listened to a couple of his lectures on the book.
He speaks with confidence about the book and HIS take on the issues described within.
I went looking for his references, and found some.
They were enough to learn that these explorers and people he refers to in collecting his information, were mainly assumption based.
Best guess theories by the language used.
He speaks of park like grassy areas, with pockets of forests or trees.
He appears to be saying, the abo's cleared the land and planted flora, (trees and grass)
Throughout any time in the history of the blacks have I ever heard of any tools or mediums used by them to perform ANY form of agriculture.
There may have been, I don't know, and apparently neither does anyone else, explorers included.
Nowhere did he ever mention the possibility that what he was describing, just might have been instigated by a previous race, 'passing' through, and were unceremoniously dealt with as history regularly reported.
These were not the 'angels' we have been led to believe, they were like anyone who encroaches on anothers lands or territories.
They would fight anyone who they felt threatened by, and so it was that Australia was in fact claimed as in the same circumstances as a victor in war.
If you want to know a little more about the 'fun loving' abo's and how strangers were received in the good ole days, dig up good ole' Captain Willem Janszoon of the good ship Defkyen, and ask him how well he and his sailors were treated, well those that the black's did not kill.
So the author does not mention or give direct reference or credence to the fact that there WERE others before and even during the time the blacks were here.
Which leaves the questions as to who exactly did what and when.
So I wonder, did any of the thirty judges stop patting each other on the back long enough to actually take a 'mommy look' into the claims and alleged findings he mentions in writing this book?

Foxy, I don't care if his name is Bruce or Bill.
If they cannot give a clear and guaranteed confirmation that any previous people or race were not responsible for the establishment of the things they purport were established and promulgated by the blacks, then I think we have only more questions.
Every moron out there is so hell bent on elevating the blacks to a station they either don't want to be in or are just not naturally in.
Today's blacks, we are told, want to be in control of their own matters.
Well that's been happening for decades.
Wanting a say in parliament, they already have that, hell we don't, so why should they? and yet they do.
So I am at odds to understand what else can we give them that they do not already have.
Every race has 'special' needs, they are no different, yet we all settle for the rule of law and what the govt comes up with, whether we like it or not, so can they!

Dear ALTRAV,

I'd admittedly given up on wading through your turgid offerings but the three Steeles lulled me into having a look.

And what little gem did you have for me?

“You see, he makes statements, claims and comments on things he cannot possibly have witnessed”

Gammage is a bloody HISTORIAN you clown. They examine historical events and they don't have to have been eye witnesses to them to investigate. If the world worked to your prescription we wouldn't have history departments at all.

Mate, you have elevated the garbage content in your posts to over 95%. Enough already.

Dear Is Mise,

You asked;

“What's petulant about asking how explorers journals have any insight into Aboriginal life thousands of years before Cook?”

Go read the book mate, Pascoe quotes archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, palynologists and environmental scientist to name a few. That is why I,m calling you petulant.

Steely, say what you like, him saying he referred to this or that may impress you, but it still doesn't answer all the questions, anyway so you pompous fool, what makes you stand in judgement, if it were not for people like us forever asking questions, there would be nothing but people like you telling us what to believe.
Before you shoot your mouth off, tell me, if the blacks were such wondrous farmers, and whatever the hell you lot want to adorn them with, where is any evidence of these spurious and yet 'unproven' claims of how wonderful they were.
Your arrogance precedes you and blinds you.
Can you not see the glaring hole in this whole story?
If these guys were only half of what these morons claim, would they (the blacks) not be further advanced in all these areas you and your mates claim.
In every other part of the world, civilization,(people) have progressed into what we call the modern era, complete with all the trappings of their ingenuity and development to where they are at today.
Heck even the slums have not deteriorated further and gone back into a pre-historic standard of living, even though they are poor and destitute.
You are as bad if not worse than what you accuse me of, because at least my position is one of seeking answers, unlike sheeple like yourself, by your own actions I might add, accept whatever is put in front of you, because they tell you it is so.
You must get conned a lot and don't even know it.
I would rather be suspicious, and inquisitive than gullible and naive.
So it is you who are talking garbage, I have conducted myself in a most responsible manner by questioning the topic and it's veracity, a more than admiral position any thinking, intelligent man would agree.
But that's not you, as you clearly don't agree and are prepared to be led, rather than lead.

Foxy,

"Is Mise,

You continue to nit-pick.

Bruce Pascoe used more than just the sources
of explorers.

Read the book"[I will when it's my turn at the local library]

We all know that he used more than just the explorers but to attribute insight into Aboriginal life thousands of years before Cook to explorers of the 19th Century is absurd.

Just shew us how he did it, you have the book.

My dear Forum Friend Il Duce (ALTRAV the leader), reading Bruce Pascoe's book 'Dark Emu' would give you a leg up when doling out the criticism. I know being totally ignorant of a subject has never held you back in past, but do you think it could be worth having a little knowledge when discussing a subject? In your case, I guess not.

Hi Foxy, great reading 'Dark Emu' well researched with lots of first sources (a favourite of Joe's).

Dear Is Mise,

Fair dinkum mate you are banging on about someone's review/opinion of Pascoe's book.

As you are the one claiming it is within its pages you can go look for it because I have read the thing and nothing stood out to me.

If you want to furnish a direct quote from it which substantiates your's or someone else's take on it be my guest and then we can discuss. But until then why should you be asking anyone to waste time on secondary opinions.

Steele,

"... you be asking anyone to waste time on secondary opinions"

Because Foxy put it up as evidence and evidence it ain't.

Is Mise,

Actually Foxy's quote should be read in full on page 28.
Which was followed up with two links further
down the page providing the evidence.

Read the book and things will become clearer for you.
In the meantime stop with the nit-picking. You're
looking silly.

Foxy, you ask too much! "read the book"! Its unapproved literature! It appears only Steele, Yourself and I have read the book. The Usual Suspects are chattering on about something they are totally clueless with.

Foxy,

You used the quote as evidence and the quote is stupid.

That's the point.

I'll read the book when it's available at my local library.

Is Mise,

No. I did not use the quote as evidence.

You interpreted it as evidence.

I said read the book and gave you two
links as evidence. The quote also indicated
that there were other sources used apart from
the diaries of explorers. And as has been
explained to you - Pascoe used more than just
the one source.

"Read the book".

I have. Which is why I know its pulp for the masses who so want it to be true. I've seen many of these things over the decades from von Daniken to Jared Diamond. They come, they flash across the culture, cooler heads examine and tear the thesis apart and we all go back to reality.

In terms of reading, might I suggest (again) that getting your views second-hand is rarely a good idea. I posted a link previously to Sturt's journals. Read them to see what Sturt really says about the natives rather than what Pascoe says he says. Read Sturt to see that the myriad primitive tribes were nomadic (ie had no fixed abode).

But only read Sturt if you're prepared to have your fondest wishes denied.

mhaze,

BRAVO, BRAVO.
Sorry I got a little carried away there for a moment.
But with good reason.
I have been preaching the same gospel, but probably not as succinctly as you, because I keep getting 'blow-back's'.
Anyway there are so many questions, even watching his video presentations only left me still with questions.
One question I have continually asked is, if there is evidence of house like structures such as the rock circles, who is to say they were not made by another race attempting to settle down but were wiped out by the blacks.
Once having rid themselves of these 'invaders', why did they not carry on developing their culture to a standard similar to the rest of the world?
Also where is the evidence of any means of doing all these wonderous things they are being praised for (tools)?
There are a group of jelly brained experts on OLO who believe that the blacks were a fun loving mild and harmless bunch.
Well try telling that to Captain Willem Janszoon from the good ship Duyfken.
He lost over a dozen men at the hands of the blacks whilst attempting to land over the course of three attempts, to re-stock their ship with food and water.
There are so many instances of the blacks being not only savages but aggressive ones at that, and that is a matter of record, but only if you want the truth.
No there is no doubt that these authors and their subsequent publications are, at best theories, at worst, fabrications.
So unless we get better proof of these archeological, history changing finds, I'm sorry but these are just a group of sad bored little men trying to grab some attention, and belong to the 'look at moi' club.
And that most certainly includes those moronic judges, for their decision to give total credence to these authors without real and serious vetting.

Me thinks the desperate are about to go down the space alien path. Whose not to say all this black bs was not the work of space aliens. No doubt the earlier space aliens were wiped out by the blacks before Cookie arrived.

"Well try telling that to Captain Willem Janszoon from the good ship Duyfken"

Il Duce, Steele has already debunked Janszoon as a cold blooded murderer who opened fire on Australian Aboriginals without provocation. Cook was known for doing the same thing as well, shooting up the indigenous when ever he felt so inclined.

mhaze,

I find your critique of Bruce Pascoe's book rather
puzzling. Pascoe demonstrates with convincing
evidence. He's not relying on oral history, which
runs the risk of being too easily debunked. His
sources are the diaries and journals of notable
explorers (including Charles Sturt), of pastoralists,
and protectors. He quotes them verbatim. I am genuinely
surprised at you. Pascoe has done a great service
by bringing this material to students and general
readers. And his sources and notations are what makes
it all credible.

Also the award winning historian - Bill Gammage's
work echoes that of Pascoe. Which gives it even more
credibility.

Many educators think that "Dark Emu,"
is a vital piece of Australian history and
should be mandatory in the national and global
curriculum.

Tyrone Ormsby, Creative Director, City Standard,
writes:

"It is unique in its vernacular and presentation, a complex
and utter reformation of the journals and records of early
European explorers and surveyors that debunks the
misinformation of "Hunter Gatherer"colonial propaganda.
In properly uncovering these archaeological records the
book reveals the ingenuity, agriculture, and engineering that
supported thriving Indigenous cultures."

There's many more such comments from educations.

ALTRAV,

Your comment and reference to "moronic judges"who you
apparently have decided give out awards without any
"real and serious vetting." is absurd.

The NSW Premier's L:iterary Awards are judged by an
independent committee of 30 judges, academics, critics,
and other industry professionals. It is no easy task
to win in any of the award categories let alone the
"Book of the Year."

You need to get your facts before you post other wise you
will seriously be considered - "Il ignorante" or a
"cretino," "buffone," or "pagliaccio."

Paul,

"... Cook was known for doing the same thing as well, shooting up the indigenous when ever he felt so inclined.".

That's interesting and I'd like to read more about it; could you give a reference, please?

Is MIse,

Ask your friendly librarian at your local library
when you go to pick up the Pascoe book. That way
you can do your own research. You'll find it even
more rewarding.

Dear mhaze,

you alledge;

"I have. Which is why I know its pulp for the masses who so want it to be true."

Oh good, then you will be able to give us at least a couple of instances where you think Pascoe falls down. I would love to discuss them with you. The floor is yours.

Certainly Issy, no sweat. Cook's ending in Hawaii.

"When an (Hawaiian) Islander was spotted making off with a pair of blacksmith's tongs"
"Cook ordered the sentries to reload their fine-shot to the more deadly ball ammunition."
"When a boat was discovered missing from the Discovery"
"The British fired cannons at canoes in the bay, then Cook went ashore with some sailors to try to bring Kalaniopu'u (Hawaiian Chief) back to the Resolution as a hostage. A shot rang out from one of the British boats, and the chief Kalimu, standing in his canoe, was killed."
"When a challenging motion (by the Hawaiians) was made toward Cook, he turned and fired his musket."
"The king's guards charged, the marines, (who had open fire, but had no time to reload), headed for the water. Many of the men, like Cook, could not swim."
"It is thought that Cook was struck with a club from behind, then stabbed repeatedly with an iron dagger that had been obtained from the British in trade by a chief named Nua."
"Following Cook's death, five British sailors were killed, and four Hawaiian chiefs and thirteen kanaka maoli (commoners) died, before cannon fire from the British ships forced everyone to leave the beach."

//"Read the book".

I (mhaze) have. Which is why I know its pulp for the masses who so want it to be true.//

mhaze; If you see what you believe to be untruths in Bruce Pascoe's 'Dark Emu' I would like you to point them out for discussion. Just which chapters, and what pulp for the masses you have uncovered.

I'm waiting with baited breath.

Issy, before you jump in, baited is spelt correctly. I feel another Porky Award coming up. It will go with your recent Porky Award me old comrade.

Paul1405,
Maybe he just wanted to bait you :-)

Paul,

You said, "Il Duce, Steele has already debunked Janszoon as a cold blooded murderer who opened fire on AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINALS without provocation. Cook was known for doing THE SAME THING as well, shooting up the indigenous when ever he felt so inclined."

Capitalization added, the above reads that Cook fired on Australian Aboriginals without provocation.

That's what I was querying.

Neither Cook nor his men ever fired at any Australian Aborigines.

In 1865, at Albany island, surgeon Dr Cannon wrote of John Jardine "by golly, this is like Duck shooting" gasped the old man after chasing a canoe with four Aboriginals & shooting them.
Lt Pascoe who was one of the Marines wrote of the same incident "At the request of Mr Jardine we accompanied the surveyor Mr Wilson when we intercepted a canoe containing four natives whom we distinctly recognised as having been engaged in the affrays of the past weeks and we shot them".
I know who I'd rather believe. A sensible man who knows that the next supplies incl ammunition are six to ten months away would not not expend bullets if there was no danger.

Paul,

"I'm waiting with baited breath."

'Baited' is spelt correctly, your problem is that you are using it incorrectly.

The phrase is 'with bated breath, 'bated' being short for 'abated'.

If one were to be really pedantic it could be written
" with 'bated breath".

Do yourself a favour and download the FREE Grammarly.
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/with-bated-breath

Izzy, I did not say that Capt Janszoon was a cold blooded killer.
I read that Janszoon, in search of food and water to re-stock his provisions on the Duyfken, tried to land three times by sailing to two other coastal sites and each time he and his crew were attacked by the natives and they had to retreat.
Until the third landing whereby they got the better of the natives.
By the end of this series of encounters he had lost about a dozen men.
This clearly paints a different picture about the 'saint like' ever welcoming blacks, we are all meant to believe they were.
We have been told many times how they were territorial and fought off anyone, including other tribes who encroached on their territory.
So why is it so hard to believe that they were not a piece loving people, when they have exhibited signs of aggression towards anyone at any time.
Fail!

No my Lovey, baited as in the worm on the end of the hook, come in sucker. That's right Issey bated as in abated rather than baited as in the worm. See mhaze never made any reference to the book, but then claimed he had read the book, not wanting to appear as totally ignorant, fat chance, a bit of face saving you could say. Like you claiming that "someone" unnamed had said an unnamed "Aboriginal Activists" had been paid a "squillion" unnamed amount, to do something at the opening of "Parliament 2019". You had no evidence, you just assumed it to be so, you made it up.

Anyway, time for another award; Issy is awarded the 'Nitpicking Medal' as judged by our esteemed panel of riff raff, for meritorious nitpicking above and beyond the call of duty! Goes with all those 'Porky Medals' ah!

a pair of blacksmith's tongs"
Paul1405,
You're attempting to make this incident sound trivial in comparison to the articles stolen. This was far more serious than simply some tool knocked off. Cook would have sensed that this was a gauging of the ship's crew's reaction & manpower by the Hawaiians.
You should really refrain from making comparison with the benefit of hindsight & today's values & mentality !
Just think of yourself having a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere & someone steals your wheel spanner !

Paul,

" Like you claiming that "someone" unnamed had said an unnamed "Aboriginal Activists" had been paid a "squillion" unnamed amount, to do something at the opening of "Parliament 2019". You had no evidence, you just assumed it to be so, you made it up."

You are getting desperate.

I gave you credit for spelling 'baited' correctly; what more do you want?

As for the quote above, I made up nothing and gave you references.
If you can't read and understand then that's your problem.

Steele,

You posted,

"Gammage is determined to open our eyes to the fact that in 1788 there was no wilderness, but a landscape that reflected a sophisticated, successful and sensitive farming regime integrated across the Australian landmass. Fire was not an indiscriminate tool of fuel reduction or grass promotion, but carefully employed to ensure certain plants and animals flourished, to facilitate access and rotation, and to ensure resources were abundant, convenient and predictable."

If that is so, why do we have "Wilderness Areas".
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/world/australia/australia-wilderness-environment-gone.html

" you will be able to give us at least a couple of instances where you think Pascoe falls down."

1. Tindale's grain arc. The book carries a map which purports to be one prepared by archaeologist Norman Tindale showing the areas where aboriginals gathered and utilised grain crops. As usual Pascoe opines that these grains were the result of farming the crops, rather than just picking the wild seeds. But the map Pascoe shows covers a much greater area than the real Tindale map. Whereas the Tindale map does not include the great grain growing areas of south-east and south-west Australia, these areas somehow get included in the Pascoe map. Why? who knows but perhaps it is a little embarrassing and contrary to Pascoe's arguments that the natives totally missed 'farming' the greatest argricultal land on the continent.

2. Early explorers. Pascoe claims that the early reports show an unbelievable number of references to stone houses etc. Now, although I hadn't read the early explorer journals for many a decade I couldn't recall many or even any such references. It turns out that Pascoe doesn't provide any references to support his claim but does complain that the explorers probably suppressed the actual numbers they found. Again no evidence for that is offered. Since then I've reread Sturt's journals to test my memory and there is no reference to such structures. That's why I've urged the gullible here (and elsewhere) to read the original sources.

/cont

/cont

3. Stone houses. Pascoe is convinced that most of those circular stone structures are the remains of stone houses constructed by sedentary natives. But the evidence for that is really only in his imagination. Most of those structures which are less than a meter high were probably wind breaks and blinds. Even when covered with bark or suchlike, they weren't permanent houses. There's more than enough evidence for that from the early settlers and current archaeologists. Additionally, early Europeans also built stone windbreaks and blinds and some of them have been confused with aboriginal erections. Finally most of these stone structures occur in places where wood was hard to access. So the suggestion that it is all over the continent was obviously made-up.

4. In comparing aboriginals to Amer-Indians, Pascoe says Liz Warren is a POC. That is now shown to be wrong.

OK I made that last one up just to trigger SR who so very much wants to forget that he even knows anyone called Warren.

Give the Academic Historians another 50 years & they'll credit the Aborigines with inventing nuclear power. That is as long as the Guilt industry hands over funding at the present rate.

I have examined Aboriginal spears with glass blades, obviously, the local aboriginals knew how to smelt glass.

Dear mhaze,

Well done. See couldn't have been too hard after all.

Do you mind if we tackle one at a time? Less confusing that way.

Right, you take issue with Pascoe's map because it covers a greater area than Tindale's original saying “The book carries a map which purports to be one prepared by archaeologist Norman Tindale”.

No mate it doesn't. It clearly states “After Tindale” and includes more areas unknown to him.

Here is a paper titled Native grasses make new products – a review of current and past uses and assessment of potential from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.

“It is more than likely, according to Tindale, who utilised recordings of grinding stones as inferring the use of grains, that the deliberate harvesting of grass seeds (and potentially also wattle tree seeds) was widespread throughout a very broad swathe of Australia. Tindale described a large area, now known as ‘Tindale’s Arc’, where grinding stones were considered as prevalent. The map, taken directly from Tindale (1974) “Aboriginal tribes of Australia” shows the area he considered where a reliance upon grass seeds as a source of food was evident. Both contemporary and older evidence (Hiatt, 1968) suggests that grinding stones are much more widespread than reported by Tindale and as such, the use of grass seeds for food is likely to have been more widespread than suggested in this map.”

“The locations of a number of the ethnobotanic studies that have been undertaken fall well outside Tindale’s Arc suggesting that the food use of native grasses by Aboriginals was even more prevalent than was first considered.”

http://www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publications/15-056.pdf

A couple of months ago I was holding an aboriginal grinding stone from a farm in the Colac district. Not included within the original Tindale map but certainly with Pascoe's. I'm not sure why this is an issue.

What else ya got?

Okay, back again.

The point missing fro this discussion is that, if farming happened in Australia on a fair scale, there would be evidence, so much of it that nobody could destroy it all. Villages, towns, cemeteries, rubbish heaps, houses with evidence of specialised occupations.

Another thing: the main reason that Africans were taken to the Americas, to work on plantations - as farmers, in a sense - was because they had been farmers for thousands of years in their African homelands. Captured by other Africans, usually Muslim, and taken to the European forts and distribution centres and ports on the coasts, by the way. In other words, they had farming traditions, which could be exploited brutally by slave-owners.

In the Americas, the native populations were usually not farmers, but hunters and gatherers (although there were major farming populations in both North and South America). So they were not amenable to work on plantations, certainly not as slaves. So African slaves did all of the work, for three hundred years. I remember when the last slave-born bloke died in Cuba, where slavery was legal until about 1900.

So when people had farming traditions, they could be more easily fitted into later farming cultures, as Australia's was - well, up until now, really. If Aboriginal people here had had farming traditions, the early settlers would have far more easily incorporated their labour into their economic systems. But that didn't happen easily, or at all in many places. Even now. Farming culture and foraging culture are drastically different, people can't just flip from one to the other.

So I hope that this myth collapses soon, and the real foraging culture can be given more value, as the most appropriate sort of culture - pre-Occupation - for Australia, and basically the only way to make use of the Australian environment with the range of plants and animals that were available.

Joe

Joe,

Does this help:

http://press-files.anu.edu/downloads/press/p72891/pdf/article0118.pdf

cont'd ...

I'll try again:

http://press-files.anu.edu/downloads/press/p72891/pdf/article0118.pdf

Just to blow the myth that slavery ended with the Civil War in America in 1865. State sanctioned slavery ended in the south states of the US in 1942. Until that year peonage still operated illegally. Then exploration of Negros continued through segregation and a pathetic wages system until today.

http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/peonage/

Joe, if you are going to have a jab at Muslim; "Captured by other Africans, usually Muslim"

Why not have a crack at the Christians; "and taken to the European forts (USUALLY CHRISTIAN)". Just for balance.

Paul, I can't find the passage or reference to where it states the European forts are "usually Christians"?
Can you direct me to it please?

Today, more than 77 percent of land on earth, excluding Antarctica, has been modified by human industry, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, up from just 15 percent a century ago.

Has anyone even bothered to popularise the invisible human impact ? Radio waves for example ? Try to imagine the noises underwater & how it affects marine life ! These effects are equally destructive to what's happening on the surface.
The pleasure/leisure/tourism industries are some of the worst offenders.

Il Duce, I know English is not your first language, and at times I think it is not your second or third either, you seem to have your own language, all that maggot stuff etc, and I understand your level of English comprehension is at the remedial. But even a not so bright chap as yourself can work it out that European forts were run by European Christians, and not for argument sake European Hindus. Not forgetting slavery was sanctioned by your man himself, the Pope.

Hi Paul,

Yes, slavery has many fathers, and it was vile and brutal either way.

So when was the slave trade declared illegal anywhere in the world ? Wilberforce campaigned against it for decades until the trade was criminalised around 1806. A good friend of his was a bloke called Arthur Phillip, who declared that there would never be official slavery in the new colony of New South Wales, since henceforth all Aboriginal people would be considered to be British subjects, like everyone else there.

Even after the French Revolution, of liberty, equality and fraternity, the 'revolutionaries' didn't extend those principles to their slave colonies in the Caribbean: the people of Haiti had to fight a vicious war for fifteen-odd years to rid themselves of French rule and its slave system.

The British eventually outlawed slavery in the 1830s, Saudi Arabia officially in 1962. In some west African countries, it is still legal. I'm trying to find out if there were any societies which did the same at an earlier time, or had never had slavery at all, not even debt slavery like in India today. Perhaps you may know, Paul ?

Cheers,

Joe

Perhaps you may know, Paul ?
Loudmouth,
Paul1405 is a slave to his indoctrination !

Individual,

As are you to reprobation?

Leap out of the stuffy attic of religion's -
"pray, pay, and obey" mentality -

Into -

The open laboratory of - "Who, what, where,
when, and why?"

More interesting!

Howdy Joe,

When Artie Phil was declaring "there (will) never be official slavery in the new colony of New South Wales". Was he by chance addressing those "convicts" in chains, you know the ones, Irish political prisoners and those guilty of being poor, just before they were marched off to "slave" for the free settlers and the government. So I take it he was okay with "unofficial" slavery.

Headline "Indigenous workers receive $190m stolen wages settlement from Queensland government" not in 1788 but in 2019. His (Hans Pearson) class action covered 1939 to 1972, when he and his fellow Indigenous workers had their pay given to the state under the Protection Act. Sounds like a bit of Artie Phillip's "unofficial slavery" to me. Don't slaves work for no pay? What do you think Joe?

Come off it Joe, Australia has a long history of slavery;

The Australian South Sea Islander community played a significant role in the development of Australia's sugar and cotton industries. Between 1863 and 1904, an estimated 55,000 to 62,500 Islanders (Kanakas) were brought to Australia to labour on sugar-cane and cotton farms in Queensland and northern New South Wales. Kanaka recruitment often involved forced removal from their homes. This practice of kidnapping labour was known as ‘blackbirding’ (‘blackbird’ was another word for slave).

Paul, so according to you a fort in Europe, automatically had to be a Christian one.
So there was not a lot of argy bargy and wars and take overs.
So according to you, Europe always belonged to the Christians, and there was never any foreign aggressors invading, settling or taking over any of the European assets or cities.
Europe was the ONLY place on Earth where other religions or races did not invade or take control of, ever.
Strange because I thought there was, and that the military posts and strongholds were the first to fall and be taken over, and then rebuilt to accommodate the invaders.
Ah well, there you go.

obey" mentality -
Foxy,
I'm not a leftist !

Individual,

And whose fault is that?

Paul,

Stolen wages, yes, across Australia. Whether Phillip conspired to bring this about, I'm not so sure.

Convicts - and I'm thinking of my own ancestors - were not slaves. They had committed offences, and avoided hanging - only just, in the case of a couple of mine: one gr-g-g-mother of mine was given the option of hanging or transportation but complained that she got sea-sick. The judge sent her out anyway, thankfully.

South Sea Islanders, yes: technically they were indentured labourers, but were treated as slaves - in fact, their descendants were then robbed of their wages. I didn't know Phillip cooked that one up either. Thanks for that, Paul.

Joe

Il Duce, the "European forts" Joe was referring to, I took to be in West Africa where slaves were obtained by Europeans for use in the Americas, nothing to do with Europe itself. Slaves were transported directly from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Not aware of any going via Europe. I took forts to be compounds, strong holds etc, probably Joe got his info watching the early episodes of 'Roots'.

Those Europeans are the most warlike people on Earth, since my grandfathers time they have managed to wipe out about 100 million of their own species, on their own turf through war.

BTW the European Christians got a right kick'n from the Muslim Ottomans a few hundred years back. They controlled large parts of Europe, had forts all over the place, I'm sure.

Paul, yes ok just had to see if you knew it too.

"Older than the pyramids, the Acropolis, Stonehenge -
Budj Bim has been added to the World Heritage List."
(from the OP).

But no mention of far older buildings; why?

Okay Joe, those people Artie Phil had in chains, gave a regular flogging to if they stepped out of line, or maybe hung them from a gibbet if he felt so inclined. These same people who had to labour for the very people who made the laws, which they had transgressed, well it was not slavery if you want to look at it that way. The majority of convicts sent to NSW their real crime was being poor.

No, I believe old Phillip had well and truly carked it by 1939. As I said if Aboriginal people worked for no wages then they were slaves in my book. What do you think, maybe like those convicts they had transgressed the law, can't do that now can we.

No Paul, I don't think there is much evidence of any of that. But keep sticking the boot into whoever you feel inclined to if it makes you feel reeeeeal good. Bastards.

Frankly, I suspect that some of my convict ancestors were never flogged: one had a bay named after him, now submerged under Warragamba Dam (I think that's what it's called, but I'm only a south australian so what do I know ?) . Another was employed on arrival by Mrs Macquarie until his ticket.

I don't understand you though: how did Aboriginal people break the law, and why should that stop them getting wages for work done ? Why do you think that ?

Joe

Did anyone else watch the powerful documentary
on AFL legend Adam Goodes this evening on
Channel 10?

It was a real eye-opener and showed that we all need to
be educated on Indigenous culture.

The film pulled no punches. If it airs again - its
definitely worth watching.

WHY?

Foxy indeed it was and is worth catching up with
However some here need no lessons in matters racist

" Arthur Phillip, who declared that there would never be official slavery"

Of course, what Phillip didn't realise at the time was that slavery already existed throughout the continent and had done for [think of a number and double it] years. Primarily the slaves were women, captured from other tribes to increase the genetic diversity of the tribe (although the people didn't realise that was the reason) but it wasn't unknown for younger boys to be also taken. The women, being property, could be sold and were. Chinese traders made regular visits to Arnhem to get women who were, apparently somewhat prized back home as concubines.

And one of the reasons the Tasmanian aboriginals died out was a fall in their birth rate because women were sold to whalers and sealers in significant numbers.

We don't know how long this had been going on because there is no written history of the previous 40000 years (but don't dare say they were pre-historic because reasons). This is rather convenient because those of a certain bent can create whatever sort of history they desire - you know, like the people all lived in McMansions etc

He who controls the present, controls the past.....

I didn't see any racists, only morons !

Hi Foxy, I fully understand why it would be worth watching. Unfortunately the closed mind of Il Duce does not allow him to view "inappropriate material". Now if it was an episode of 'Beavis and Butt-Head' you suggest he watch. he would be all for it.

Hi Joe "how did Aboriginal people break the law," Here is a link to Aboriginals in chains at Wyndham Prison in 1902. "It’s also possible that they have been rounded up to be moved to a reserve areas which were being created at the time and that these individuals did not want to move". Now there's a crime in itself "they didn't want to go" how ungrateful of them! Look like the criminal class, Lock them up I say, put them in chains, teach them a lesson to respect their betters.

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/australian-aborigines-chains-1902/

It is amazing what one can fabricate through ones minds eye, particularity when one tends to prejudge a people because of race. Mhaze you make a number of claims about Aboriginal people, would you care to put up the evidence about, slaves, Chinese traders, women, boys, Tasmanian's, whalers and sealers. Its all in your post, but nothing to substantiate your claims.

"because those of a certain bent can create whatever sort of history they desire" Is that you mhaze?

Paul, it's amazing how low you lot can go.
The one thing you and your cronies lack is a deductive and open mind.
You accept only information and material which bolsters and backs your views, beliefs and agenda.
You mock, knock, and ridicule anyone who differs or challenges your take on everything, as if you are the omnipotent, the exalted one.
Well Paul, if you had the slightest modicum of reason and common sense you would see that I ask questions, consider the answers then begin to form a rational and pragmatic direction, not conclusion, that comes much later when the information begins to stack up in one definite direction.
These conclusions are not 'made', or 'decided' by me, they become known by virtue of the information garnered along the way.
I don't quote references like you lot, because there are many to arrive at a conclusion both positive and negative.
In all too many cases the subconscious forms the final opinion and you find yourself with the answer by natural attrition and deliberation of the facts from the truth.
So don't try to describe me or my motives, I don't have any

" but nothing to substantiate your claims. "

Whereas all of Paul's assertions are meticulously researched and referenced. (That's sarcasm folks!).

Now I'm not going to spend too much time going back over all my research books and resources because in the end Paul doesn't care whether my claims are supported or not. He just wants to assert that they can't be. Last time he asked me to justify my points, I spent a deal of effort doing so and his response.....crickets.

So...

1. Lyndal Ryan (a bleeding-heart for aboriginals) wrote in Aboriginal Tasmanians (page 79 in my edition)..." Aboriginal society faced its first major upheaval with Europeans over the 'gift' of women ....in return for Europeans provisions. [Some tribes] found themselves with only a small number of women, having lost many to neighbouring bands who appropriated them for exchange with the Europeans. The loss of women led to an immediate decline in the birth rate." Elsewhere she talks of how the women held by sealers on the various islands avoided the European diseases and that consequently almost all surviving Tasmanians descended from these sealer male-aboriginal female unions.

2. Blainey (Triumph of the Nomads) has an extensive discussion about Chinese traders, who mainly came south for sandalwood, also returned with aboriginal women. These no record of that in Australia because, as you might know, they didn't write. But there are such records in Chinese archives. Macau, for various reasons seems to have had a sizeable number of such women.

I'd also recommend you read Windschuttle's 'Fabrication' on this same issue, but I don't see much chance of that.

Dear Paul,

If the first words out of someone's mouth are to
cry insults,
chances are very, very, high that they are in fact
part of the problem.

I admire your patience.