Prior to colonisation, the Kuku-Yalanji Peoples of the rainforest region of far north Queensland used large bailer (melon) shells or bark troughs for boiling water over a fire.
A practical example of filtering can be found in southwest Victoria, where in traditional times, Gunditjmara Aboriginal peoples used flowering honeysuckle cones (banksias) to filter water from muddy pools when clean drinking water was unavailable.
The main water sources for Aboriginal people across the Australian continent were waterways and lakes. However, a range of ingenious water collection and storage methods were, and still are, used in Aboriginal communities.
Roasting on hot coals: The basic technique for cooking flesh, including most meats, fish and small turtles. A further slow roasting, involving covering with coals and ashes may have then been employed to thoroughly cook the meat or to soften an otherwise tough meat. After cooking, the meat would be quickly consumed.
The people used grease from porcupine, possum, muttonbird, seal and penguin to coat their skin as a waterproof layer and for warmth against the extreme weather conditions. The founding population in this new land became the most southerly living humans in the world during the last Ice Age.
A NEW STUDY HAS revealed how indigenous Australians coped with the last Ice Age, roughly 20,000 years ago. Researchers say that when the climate cooled dramatically, Aboriginal groups sought refuge in well-watered areas, such as along rivers, and populations were condensed into small habitable areas.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Prior to colonisation, the Kuku-Yalanji Peoples of the rainforest region of far north Queensland used large bailer (melon) shells or bark troughs for boiling water over a fire.
Aboriginal people ate a large variety of plant foods such as fruits, nuts, roots, vegetables, grasses and seeds, as well as different meats such as kangaroos, 'porcupine'7, emus, possums, goannas, turtles, shellfish and fish.
Yet for more than 50,000 years Aboriginal Australians cultivated and domesticated crops that were native to the continent, and therefore better adapted to its temperature and environmental pressures, providing great abundance, nutrition and diversity of food to Indigenous communities.
Bores, wells and spring water are important for communities in very dry areas of Australia. It is vital that the water from these sources is managed well so that the water supply is always available and safe enough to drink. Bore water is the major source of water for remote Aboriginal communities.
Aboriginal peoples in the past used water from rivers for all their water needs - drinking, fishing, and washing. As well as using the water, spending time on rivers and billabongs is central to intergenerational knowledge and cultural transfer, and family time.
Aboriginal Peoples in Victoria have a deep connection with waters and waterways. They are essential to Spiritual and Cultural practices, as well as environmental management, food production, language and (Lore) law. Water connects People and communities to land, and to each other.
For First Nations People, water is life and we are its caretakers. Aboriginal people have always cared for and continue to nurture our waterways and use water to sustain our social, cultural and economical wellbeing.
It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
Aboriginal people of the inland differentiate between permanent water, called Living water, and seasonal water that dries up during parts of the year. For Walmajarri people like Jimmy Pike, the word for permanent water is Jila, whereas the word for seasonal water is Jumu.
comm.). Meggitt's assertion received support from Richard Gould (1982:77) who concluded that the diet of Western Desert Aborigines 'is primarily vegetarian, with the women providing about 95% of the total diet about 90% of the time, mainly in the form of edible plant staples.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Dairy milk (cow, sheep and goat) was consumed by just over two thirds (69%) of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population (see Table 4.1). This was similar to the proportion of non-Indigenous people that consumed these products (68%) (see Table 4.3).
Many archeologists believe the smaller earth ovens lined with hot stones were used to boil water in the pit for cooking meat or root vegetables as early as 30,000 years ago (during the Upper Paleolithic period).
Using multiple stones, they were able to get the water inside the deer hide to boil. Another group was also attempting to boil water inside a deer hide hung directly over a fire—a technique admittedly less grounded in physical evidence from archaeological sites.
In ancient times, some people harvested rain in big containers, but many more people used water that had collected naturally in streams, rivers, and in the ground. They could find groundwater rushing by in rivers, or bubbling up from underground through a spring. They could also dig deep into the earth to find water.
Australia is home to the oldest continuing living culture in the entire world. The richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australia is something we should all take pride in as a nation.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers. The tallies of the dead are not the only measure of what took place, according to Dr Bill Pascoe, a digital humanities specialist and key researcher on the project. “We are always using conservative estimates,” Pascoe said.