Abstract
Australia is said to have supported as many as 300,000 aboriginals before the first white settlers arrived. The aboriginals were widely dispersed then—more dispersed than is the Australian population today. Nearly every plain, tableland and valley was inhabited for at least part of the year. Every desert yielded food. Every district, even in drought, yielded raw material for making equipment. Amongst the areas which were closely settled were the banks and billabongs of the Murray Valley and favoured bays and rivermouths along the tropical coast.
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Notes
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ‘Former Numbers and Distribution of the Australian Aborigines’, Commonwealth Official Year Book, 1930, no. 23, pp. 687–96. According to his estimate Vic, Tas, and S.A. together held less than 10 per cent of the total.
T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (London, 1890) pp. 15–20.
D. Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (London, 1798). An example of Malthus‘s copying is his third paragraph on p. 16, taken almost verbatim from Collins, p. 557.
Abortion in 350 societies: G. Devereux, cited by S. Polgar, ‘Population History and Population Policies from an Anthropological Perspective’, Current Anthropology, 1972, vol. 13, p. 206.
Graeme Pretty, ‘The Cultural Chronology of the Roonka Flat: a Preliminary Consideration’, ronoed, Conference of Austn. Inst. of Aboriginal Studies, May 1974.
James Woodburn, in R. B. Lee and I. De Vore, ed., Man the Hunter (Chicago, 1968), p. 91.
S. Polgar, Current Anthropology vol. 13, p. 205; Moni Nag, ‘Anthropology and Population’, Population Studies, 1973, vol. 27, p. 61 ff;
C. O. Sauer, Land and Life (1965) p. 175. 103 Spread of epidemics amongst isolated aboriginals: Buckley, p. 68; E. C. Black in B. C. Cotton, p.102–3;
J. Hawdon, Journal of a Journey in 1838 (Melbourne, 1952), p. 27.
Power of sorcery: D. F. Thomson, ‘The Native People’, in C. Pearl ed., Australia, (Sydney, 1965), pp. 36–8.
Buckley’s early life: M. J. Tipping, ‘Buckley’, in A.D.B., vol. 1, p. 174; C. M. Tudehope, ‘William Buckley’, Victorian Historical Magazine, 1962, vol. 32, pp. 216 ff.
New York professor: Moni Nag, in Population Studies, 1973, vol. 27, p. 61.
Evidence of heavy fighting in other parts of Australia is easily found. For instance see D. Thomson, in C. Pearl ed., Australia, pp. 37–8; M. J. Meggitt in Desert People, p. 42; A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (London, 1904), p. 348;
W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies Among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines (Brisbane, 1897), p. 139 ff.
Gannibalism: index to Curr, Australian Race, vol. 3, p. 702; Buckley, p. 50; R. M. and C. H. Berndt, The First Australians (Sydney, 1967 edn.), p. 134;
T. G. H. Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia (Sydney, 1971), pp. xlii n., 611 n;
Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Arunta: a Study of a Stone Age People (London, 1927), vol. 2, p. 495; W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies, p. 166.
Carl Lumholtz, Among Cannibals: an Account of Four Years’ Travels and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland (London, 1889), pp. 271–4.
Population pressure as alleged causes of war: G. Blainey, The Causes of War, (London, 1973), pp. 10–11.
Discussions of Birdsell’s views: Mulvaney, Prehistory, p. 50; A. P. Elkin, ‘Man and his Past in Aboriginal Australia’, A. & P.A., 1967, vol. 2, p. 42.
Iron age reaches Cape York: R. L. Jack, Report on Explorations in Cape York Peninsula, 1879–80 (Brisbane, 1881), p. 41
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© 1975 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Blainey, G. (1975). Birth and Death. In: Triumph of the Nomads. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02423-0_7
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