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 ...