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Kathy Prokhovnik

~ Sydney snaps: what's behind what's around you

Kathy Prokhovnik

Tag Archives: Aboriginal food resources

It’s NAIDOC week

13 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by kathyprokhovnik in Sydney snaps

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Aboriginal food resources, Aboriginal responses to Phillip

Governor Phillip’s voyage to New South Wales and the first year of the colony are recorded in a book published by John Stockdale in London in 1789[1]. There can be no question, from reading these accounts, that the British understood that the land they had started to clear and plunder was owned by other people. Much of the volume reports their encounters with tribes of Aboriginal people – people who took them to their encampments, who helped them to find water, to make fires, to find shelter. People who Phillip realises, within his first 12 months in NSW, were farming the land with fire, knew how to process foods to make them edible (removing the ‘noxious qualities’ from ‘the kernels of that fruit which resembles a pine-apple’ – the cycad[2]), and ‘are not without notions of sculpture’[3] – his response to the rock carvings of ‘figures of animals, of shields, and weapons, and even of men’. He holds their apparent lack of clothing or permanent shelter against them, but contemplates on the fact that they have developed ‘the arts of imitation and amusement … [which] seems an exception to the rules laid down by theory for the progress of invention.’[4] He follows this train of thought by adding that it may just be that they don’t need clothing and shelter and that ‘had these men been exposed to a colder atmosphere, they would doubtless have had clothes and houses, before they attempted to become sculptors.’ He has a high regard for their courage and bravery and their ‘lack of treachery’.

Phillip’s main purpose in his dealings with the Aboriginal people seems to be based on a blind belief that British influence will improve their lot. He cannot help but believe that, once the Aboriginal people start to mix with ‘their new countrymen’ they will ‘enrich themselves with some of their implements, and to learn and adopt some of the most useful and necessary of their arts.’ He allows himself the doubt ‘whether many of the accommodations of civilized life, be not more than counterbalanced by the artificial wants to which they give birth’ but steadies himself with the thought that they would be teaching ‘the shivering savage how to clothe his body, and to shelter himself completely from the cold and wet, and to put into the hands of men, ready to perish for one half of the year with hunger, the means of procuring constant and abundant provision, must be to confer upon them the benefits of the highest value and importance.’[5] This despite the fact that he has previously acknowledged both that their needs for clothing and shelter are limited, and that his colony is depriving them of their food stocks.

He believes that the land can only be improved by blind adherence to British principles too.

Nothing can more fully point out the great improvement which may be made by the industry of a civilized people in this country, than the circumstances of the small streams which descend into Port Jackson. [By clearing the streams of all obstacles they will flow more freely, be ‘more useful’, and the adjacent ground will be drained] … habitable and salubrious situations will be gained where at present perpetual damps prevail, and the air itself appears to stagnate.[6]

Phillip acknowledges that the presence of the British is not welcome. In a journey of exploration between Port Jackson and Broken Bay his group encounters a party of about 60 Aboriginal people: “Some hours were passed with them in a peaceful and very friendly manner, but … they seemed best pleased when their visitors were preparing to depart. This has always been the case, since it has been known among them that our people intend to remain on the coast.”[7] Despite this sensitivity to the feelings of the Aboriginal people, Phillip has no qualms about digging open a mound, suspected of being a grave. What punishment for grave-robbing in England?

 

[1] The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, London 1789 (facsimile edition Hutchinson 1982)
[2] p135
[3] p106
[4] p107
[5] p141
[6] p98
[7] p133

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Centennial Park

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by kathyprokhovnik in Sydney snaps

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Aboriginal food resources, dugong, Val Attenbrow

For a very long time before Centennial Park featured a purpose-built waterplay area and ‘wild’ garden for children, it was a source of food for the local people. But in 1811 Governor Macquarie proclaimed 490 acres to the south of South Head Road as common grazing land, and the area that was to become the Centennial Parklands (Centennial Park, Moore Park and Queens Park) was cut off from its previous users.

A report by Val Attenbrow, assessing the evidence for the use of the area by Aboriginal people prior to colonisation[1], finds that the parklands would have provided many types of food and other resources. There were ‘plants that provided fruits, berries, seeds, tubers, nectar as well as leafy vegetables. They also provided wood, bark and fibres used to make tools, weapons and other pieces of equipment.’ It gives examples such as banksia, collected for nectar; melaleuca, ‘used as a wrap/blanket on which children were laid and in which babies were carried’; and grass trees (Xanthorrhoea) – the stems were used for spear shafts, the resin was used as an adhesive to make tools, to patch canoes or baskets, and to fasten objects into people’s hair, and the fronds were used in headdresses in ceremonies. (page 9)

Animals that would have been hunted in the heath and wooded areas of the parklands include ‘kangaroos, wallabies, possums, gliders, echidnas, bandicoots, fruit bats … birds, snakes, goannas and other lizards’. The freshwater wetlands would have been habitat for many types of fish as well as eels, tortoises, frogs and shellfish. Waterbirds would have been present in good numbers, and their eggs could have been eaten as well. Additionally, ‘emus are not on the current list of birds that inhabit the Parklands, [but] they would have been there in the past.’ (page 10)

I suppose the children of those times played in the water, hid from their parents and grandparents and balanced on logs, just as ours do today.

The local Aboriginal people would have used resources from a wider area than the parklands, so the report includes archaeological evidence from the surrounding area, the eastern Sydney peninsula. One find was at Sheas Creek at St Peters, where dugong bones were discovered when the creek was being turned into the Alexandra Canal. The report says:

Cut marks and scars on the bones suggest the animal was butchered and thus killed for food. Two ground-edged hatchet heads found in these deposits at the same time come from ca 70 m away from the dugong bones and whether they were deposited at the same time is not clear. The dugong bone has recently been dated to around 6000 years BP.[2]

The dugong is a sea creature, ‘a large grey brown bulbous animal with a flattened, fluked tail … no dorsal fin, paddle like flippers and distinctive head shape.’[3] They are mammals and can grow to 400 kilograms by grazing on sea meadows. They are thought to have inspired the idea of a mermaid, but you would have to say it was a mermaid with a very unfortunate face with their huge droopy noses and tiny eyes.

I keep thinking about that dugong. At that time, 6000 years ago, the coastline would have been roughly where it is now (18 000 years ago it was 12 km from the present coastline and the sea level was 140 metres below the present level) but that’s still a few kilometres from the spot where the bones were found. Why would you carry a dugong all that way? The creek itself was shallow, surrounded by swamps, so maybe the dugong got trapped there, having travelled up the Cooks River, making it easy prey. These days, when the Alexandra Canal is described as ‘the most severely contaminated canal in the southern hemisphere’[4], and the Cooks River has the unenviable title of ‘Australia’s most polluted river’[5], a dugong would die before it got anywhere near the bridge over Ricketty Street.

[1] https://www.centennialparklands.com.au/getmedia/e32ae90a-e730-4c28-82c4-4b17e9e3c5e1/Appendix_S_-_Pre-colonial_Archaeology_report_Val_Attenbrow.pdf.aspx

[2] Pre-colonial Aboriginal land and resource use in Centennial, Moore and Queens Parks, Val Attenbrow 2002, p22.

[3] https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/mammals/dugong/

[4] https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/from_sheas_creek_to_alexandra_canal

[5] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/cooks-river-20190110-h19wqs.html

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