The Nomadic Alternative – Page 145

the grass in drives for small game, journeying to known sources
of sugar-bag honey (sugar is the fuel of the brain and a crucially
important item in every human diet.). The end of the annual drought
was the nerve-fraying lean season. They poisoned fish in the rivers
and hunted kangaroo. But gradually humidity built up and the summer
lightning flashed. Rain was imminent when the Wik Monkan held their
rain-making ceremonies. The rains came and the cycle began all over
again.

To the European travellers the Australian deserts seemed lost
wildernesses of cutting grasses and piercing thorns, arid tracts so
desolate that human life seemed impossible. They assumed that the
Aborigines who eked out a precarious existence in these solitudes
must be refugees from some more respectable climate. In fact the
colonists were so intent on convincing themselves that any
change they inflicted on the Aborigines was automatically for the
good, that they failed to take stock of the situation. One notable
exception to this wilful blindness was Sir George Grey, whose
observations of the Aborigines before their culture was destroyed
by the whites are so revealing as to warrant quotation at length:

"One mistake, very commonly made with regard to the natives
of Australia, is to imagine that they have small means of sub-
sistence; or are at times greatly pressed for want of food. A
could produce many, almost numerous, instances of the errors
into which travellers have fallen on this point. They insert in
their journals that the unfortunate Aborigines should be reduced
by famine to the miserable necessity of subsisting on certain
sorts of food which they have found in their huts; whereas in
many instances the articles, thus quoted by them, are those
which the natives most prize, and are deficient neither in flavour
nor nutritious quality ... Captain Sturt ... says in his travels
--'among other things we found a number of bark troughs filled
with the gum of the mimosa, and vast quantities of gum, made
into cakes, upon the ground: From this it would appear that
these unfortunate creatures were reduced to the last extremity,
and being unable to procure other nourishment, had been obliged
to collect this mucilaginous food.' The gum of the mimosa, thus
referred to, is a favourite article of food among the natives;
and when it is in season they assemble in large numbers upon
the plains ... in order to enjoy this luxury.

Generally speaking the natives live well; in some districts
there may, at particular seasons of the year, be a deficiency
of food, but if such is the case, these tracts are, at those
times, deserted. It is, however, utterly impossible for a traveller
or even for a strange native to judge whether a district affords
an abundance of food, or the contrary; for in traversing exten-
sive parts of Australia, I have found sorts of food vary from
latitude to latitude, so that the vegetable productions used
by the Aborigines in one are totally different to those in