How to be a hunter-gatherer

Before I went to Australia, my knowledge of aboriginal Australians was sketchy, to say the least, and in retrospect what I learnt about them at school was in part based on propaganda supporting the interests of the British government: aborigines constituted a tiny population eeking out a living in the desert regions of central Australia. In this cartoon world, they lived around Ayers Rock (now known by its aboriginal name, Uluru) and - apparently - nowhere else. I'd not really had cause to think about this since, and was given food for thought when visiting the dense jarrah woodlands which supported a thriving forestry industry under Europeans to find that the area had had an indigenous population - as had all the other areas that I visited.

I began asking the straightforward question of how big the aboriginal population was before the Europeans arrived. Since no-one could answer this, I searched on the internet, and discovered that current estimates are about 750,000, and maybe as many as a million people. I was struck by how large a population was supported by a largely hunter-gatherer economy, compared with the total current population of Australia (including indigenous peoples) of about 21 million. Not surprisingly, the population wasn't centred in the desert, but in the areas now supporting the largest populations of European descent: around the coast, particularly in south-east Australia along the Murray River. Within a hundred years of the European invasion, the indigenous population was reduced to 60,000, largely through the ravages of the infectious diseases that the Europeans brought with them, but also through direct massacre.

This context makes the legal principle governing aboriginal lands of terra nullius - that the land was empty before the British arrived, belonged to no-one, and could legitimately be taken over - dubiously tenable. In 1992, it was overturned, and some land has been returned to its indigenous owners. Parts of this land are leased back to the government as national parks (including some of the best known natural areas, such as Kakadu, and the area around Uluru and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas)).

The whole situation is far too complex, and I know far too little, for glib statements on my part, but I was interested in learning more about how the aborigines lived, and the current climate is clearly to inform both non-indigenous Australians and foreign visitors as much as possible about aboriginal ways of life.

Apart from widespread information at cultural centres and on display boards, I also went on two cultural 'experiences'. The first was incidental to a night trip on a billabong to look for wildlife, and an introduction from the campsite warden - mostly about crocodiles, and delivered largely in the style of a British army sergeant during the national service years (if my O level study of Arnold Wesker's play 'Chips with everything' is anything to go by) - was followed by the arrival of Jenny and the question what was the object that looked like a smoking cigar that she was carrying. Avid readers of this blog will know that the answer was a Banksia cone used for carrying fire from one camp to another. What was fascinating was that in the jarrah forests of Western Australia the cones are from Banksia grandis and burn for up to 24 hours, while in Kakadu, the aborigines must make do with Banksia dentata, a much smaller cone that burns for only two or so hours.

Jenny also showed us how the leaves of Pandanus (a kind of tree) are prepared and used for basket making, and how earth ovens are constructed and used, and which herbs are used with the cooking. The more practical parts of the evening involved spear throwing and didgeridoo playing: neither activities that aboriginal women normally partake in. For the record, I was as bad as everyone else at using a spear thrower, and somewhat better than most with a didgeridoo (I did get a sound out of it).

The other trip was a whole afternoon and evening, and led by Sean with the aid of Patsy, an aboriginal woman who grew up living a traditional lifestyle.

To the casual visitor to Kakadu, it is not obvious that there are aborigines still living partly off the land: there are no signposts to such aboriginal communities. In Kakadu, the aborigines became highly dependent on feral buffalo as a meat source. About 80 buffalo were introduced to northern Australia in the early 19th century as a source of meat. Eventually the settlements were abandoned, and despite hunting for meat, hides and trophies, the buffalos spread and became pests, both through habitat destruction, and as reservoirs for diseases of cattle. As part of an eradication program, the population in Kakdu was reduced from 20,000 in 1988 to under 250 in 1996. Because of their importance as a meat source, the aborigines negotiated permission to maintain a fenced and disease-free herd.

Modern firearms are used to kill the buffalo, and also for hunting Magpie Geese and feral pigs. These were part of our dinner:

We spent the afternoon collecting other parts of our dinner. The aborigines traditionally use different animal food sources at the times of year when they are in the best condition. The marshes are drying at this season, and the fresh-water mussels and turtles go into hibernation - or rather aestivation - deep in the drying mud. Patsy showed us how to find mussels by probing with a digging stick and listening for the sound as it hit a mussel, and we were let loose to try for ourselves. Traditionally, digging sticks are made of ironwood (a kind of tree), but nowadays they are made of metal.

Our total catch was rather modest, but Patsy deftly removed a section of bark from a paperbark tree,

and quickly fashioned a basket to carry them in:

We went to another area, and used the same technique to search for turtles, without success: the 'dry' season has been fairly wet this year, and the marshes not yet dried out to the point that the turtles are beginning aestivation.

Next we went to an area of marsh that was fairly well dried out, and broke up clods of solid mud to find the tubers of water chestnuts (a plant that looks like a grass). This is the same plant that figures in chinese cuisine, but the wild variety that we were seeking has relatively tiny tubers, maybe 5 mm across. I supect that our efforts ranked with chewing raw celery - that we used more calories obtaining the water chestnuts than we were going to obtain from them as a foodstuff.

Once we'd collected food, we collected firewood (we were relatively good at that!) and Patsy stripped some large pieces of paperbark for use in the ground oven, and there was still time for learning some other useful ways of living off the land. For example, the bulge on this tree's trunk can be cut open to obtain water:

Green ants build nests in trees using living leaves. The adults use their jaws to clamp the leaves temporarily into position, and then others use larvae as 'silk guns' to sew them together.

Unlike other ants, green ants produce ascorbic acid (vitamin C) rather than formic acid for protection. The aborigines use them for treating colds and other ailments. Patsy showed us how to crush a nest and fish out the leaf fragments to leave just the ants, which are eaten whole. And yes, they do taste like limes.

At the end of the afternoon, we went to 'goose camp' (where the huge magpie goose roost was) and built two fires - one for Sean to boil tea, mussels and water chestnuts, and make 'damper' (bread made from water, self-raising flour, and salt) , and the other for a ground oven for the meat and fish.

While the fires were reaching the right stage, Patsy plucked the geese and singed off the down in the flames.

The meat and fish were put onto the embers of the fire on a bed of herbs, and covered with paperbark to cook ...

The mussels were chewy and had a muddy flavour, but the water chestnuts tasted good. As well as the magpie geese, buffalo and feral pig meat, along with barramundi, came out of the oven. They were all good, although the meat was less cooked than Europeans are used to: in aboriginal culture it is an offence to over-cook meat as it results in the loss of the fat which is a vital contribution to the (traditional) diet.

Although not surprising, the half-day emphasized how hard it is to live off the land: the food that we had collected ourselves - the mussels and water chestnuts - were a trivial contribution to what we ate. Perhaps more interesting was watching Patsy at work with a level of dexterity born out of long practice, without which this way of living would not be viable. Nevertheless, as Sean said in his introduction earlier in the day, we were witnessing a culture in the process of extinction.