Dark Emu. Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? by Bruce Pascoe, Magabala Books, $35.
Reviewed by Joe Blake.
It seems that every invading power does its best to destroy the culture that existed before it. The idea is, I think, to convince the locals (and themselves?) that what had been built up over previous generations was so negligible as to be unworthy of being preserved. Take Australia, for instance. We all knew that the land was not really owned by the people who lived here; it was, we were told incessantly, terra nullius. Those primitive Aboriginal people scratched a living as best they could, but made no advances towards anything substantial; no solid houses, no machinery, no crops, nothing.
Well, no, as it turns out. In this excellent book Bruce Pascoe provides plenty of first-hand accounts (by white people, no less) that tell us much about the enterprising ways of our first residents. He also raises a lot of questions, most of which have never been considered – let alone answered – in the two and a half centuries since Captain Cook set in train the colonisation of this land.
Pascoe quotes explorers and settlers to show that the hunter-gatherer model was only a part of the indigenous lifestyle. Descriptions, first of all of agriculture, include:
- tons of stored grain;
- large areas of cultivated, aerated rich soil;
- miles of hay-ricks prepared for the winnowing of grain;
- large numbers of people digging yams while at the same time turning the soil over and getting it ready for the next crop. (These same myrnong yams once carpeted much of Australia in yellow flowers, but virtually disappeared, due to the effects of hard-hoofed animals, within a couple of years of white settlement.);
- a fire-managed environment that resembled a “gentleman’s park”, with trees confined to the poorest soil, leaving the best ground for the growing of crops;
- the trading of seeds across large distances;
- construction of huge irrigation dams, which were also stocked with yabbies and fish;
- long stone or brushwood fences used for driving kangaroos and emus into places where they could be captured.
Pascoe also quotes research that shows that plants had become dependent on human activity, just as wild wheat and barley had become domesticated in Europe. He also provides evidence of baking at least 10,000 years before any other culture on earth.
Aquaculture was also a prominent part of Aboriginal life in many areas. I was lucky enough recently to visit Brewarrina, in outback New South Wales, and see the extensive fish traps that fed hundreds of people when they gathered for feasting, ceremonies, courting and a range of other social activities. Western Victoria was home to a myriad of stone placements that were used to store and utilise fish. It’s also the place where fish were smoked for use by a very large population. There are descriptions here of a wide range of methods of catching fish without depleting stocks in many different locations across the whole continent. Compare this to the white man’s way, where paddlesteamers would deploy hundreds of nets in a section of the Murray until the area was “fished out”, never to recover.
As further proof of the sophistication of Aboriginal civilisation, Pascoe discusses housing, which was solid and often dome-shaped, using whalebones or steamed timber beams to create the curves: evidence of a sedentary, rather than nomadic, lifestyle. Unfortunately, not many photos of these buildings exist; photography wasn’t available when white settlement began, and these buildings were quickly destroyed by the invaders. Much of the design had a religious intent, and was also used to predict solstices, essential for crop planting.
Food storage and preservation is a sign of an advanced society, and the local people were very adept at it. They also developed complicated ways of removing toxins from foods that would otherwise have killed the eater.
The use of fire to create the landscape first seen by 18th century white settlers was not only highly sophisticated, it was a sacred duty, part of an evolved system of religious observance that covered all aspects of living. This religion had developed in a practical form, with a reason behind its every aspect. It’s probably the reason Australia was free of major conflicts, over many millennia. Compare that to the devastating religious wars in most other parts of the world, even to the present day.
Pascoe and Magabala Books have much to be proud of in this fascinating book. It pushes a lot of boundaries that have never been tested before, and asks a lot of questions that must be answered. As we move towards a referendum to recognise our first people in the constitution, we need a much greater recognition of what the world lost when a mob of boat people, most of them convicted criminals, descended on Terra Australis.
If you want to buy this amazing book, just slip online and find Magabala Books. That’s the Aboriginal publisher based in Broome, and it’s been going strong for over 25 years now. You’ll not only be discovering things you never knew about the country you live in, you’ll also be supporting a very worthwhile organisation.