Exactly how long it took for Aboriginals to spread out over the continent is disputed (as is just about everything in this very remote period). Anywhere from a few thousand to over 10,000 years has been suggested. What isn’t disputed is that, despite the immense diversity of the continent (desert in the centre, tropical rainforest on the Cape, glaciers on the mountains of Tasmania), Aboriginal peoples found ways to thrive in every ecological niche available.
Life in Aboriginal Australia
Find a carpenter’s tape measure. Pretend each centimetre equals ten years. Unreel the tape measure and look at the very first 22 centimetres — that’s the entire history of European settlement in Australia. Now (in a good long room and if your tape is long enough) unreel the tape measure to 50 metres — that’s a conservative estimate of the length of Aboriginal history (or 5,000 years). Some scientists argue that, based on archaeological evidence, Aboriginal people arrived in Australia at least 65,000 years ago.
Evidence exists of trade and cultural exchange between Aboriginal peoples and South-East Asians dating back thousands of years, so it can hardly be likely that Aboriginals were unaware of agriculture. They simply had little use for it in the dry, unfertile soils of their home. Agriculture was unsuited to Australia’s grasslands and deserts (some argue agriculture still is, despite all the water and modern fertilisers we can throw at it), so Aboriginal communities predominately survived by hunting and gathering, managing resources extremely prudently — and maintaining their population at a sustainable level. While they did grow crops of tubers such as yams, grain such as native millet, macadamia nuts, fruits and berries, their farming has been described as an activity rather than a lifestyle.
The Aboriginals were careful not to damage the fragile web of ecological relationships that sustains life on this dry island, because they depended on the web for survival. (And, incidentally, they didn’t wash much because they were well aware that water was too valuable to waste — something all Australians have been learning recently.) When the Europeans landed, Aboriginal peoples actually had a better life expectancy than the colonists, as well as almost no instances of the ‘modern’ diseases — tooth decay, heart disease, tuberculosis and cancer. The effectiveness of their resource management (such as the controlled burns to increase hunting pasture) gave them far more leisure time than the arriving agriculturalists, which equalled time to play, talk and dream. That’s right — the original affluent society.
This isn’t to make the mistake of romanticising the tougher elements of Aboriginal life. Records suggest that even infanticide (killing newborn babies) was carried out in some cultural or tribal groups to ensure sustainable population levels. Deaths from tribal warfare and feuds were relatively commonplace. Life was no picnic. Aboriginals needed to make hard choices and ruthless decisions simply to survive, as well as develop infinite resourcefulness and adaptability. But no-one can deny that, survival-wise, the Aboriginal way of life was a tremendous success. Aboriginals have managed to maintain a continuous culture through millennia, which is something no other people — anywhere — has achieved.
Indigenous Australians didn’t engage in intensive, settled agriculture. Their lifeways were nomadic rather than sedentary — which is another way of saying they didn’t structure their whole way of life around living in settled villages, nearby fenced-in paddocks and fields. Instead, they moved about relatively frequently, even as they harvested native grasses, constructed elaborate dams and, in some places, stone houses.
As they moved about their country they also practised firestick farming, using fire to manage different environments. This helped create and sustain the enormous grasslands across the plains of south-eastern Australia — and so helped shape and curate the landscape we recognise today as Australian.
In two very direct ways, the lifeways of Aboriginal peoples created the conditions that subsequent Australian society would build with:
The British–European settler society that established itself after 1788 did so in a physical environment that had been crafted, curated and maintained by Indigenous Australians over many millennia. Those who came after benefitted from the tens of thousands years of sustained occupation by this original nomadic society — and they especially benefitted from the fertile grasslands just perfect for sheep and cattle (see Chapter 7).
When the British first came to Australia, they found a low-population density compared to sedentary agricultural societies in other nearby places. In Polynesia and Maori New Zealand, for instance, fortified villages and more intensive cultivation occurred, which meant that when Europeans arrived any violent resistance could draw on more numbers. Australian nomadic society flourished as a small-scale proliferation of small bands, which left them vulnerable to the really huge numbers and resources settler societies could call upon when they arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Violent resistance to European invasion in Australia still occurred, of course. Everywhere the frontier extended, violent conflict took place. But in terms of sheer numbers and scale of response, the dice were stacked against the original possessors of the continent.
History without books
Above all, the prehistoric Aboriginals were masters of language. Historians estimate that up to 750 distinct languages existed on the Australian continent when the European settlers arrived (refer to Figure 2-1), which implies that the average person would probably have had to be fluent in quite a few different languages just to get along with his or her neighbours.