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Australia Before 1778

The Aborigines used their knowledge of the habits of animals to catch them. In Central Australia, they made emu traps by fixing the points of sharpened wooden stakes at the bottom of a large hole and covering the hole with branches. The emus walked over the branches and fell to their deaths on the spikes. Nets were used to catch fish, birds and larger animals, including sea mammals called dugongs . Complicated systems of channels, dams and pens were made out of stones, and fish and eels were swept along by the water currents into these traps. Poisons were used to stun fish, and sticky sap was spread on tree branches so that small birds would become stuck there.

A painting by Benjamin Duterreau of a Tasmanian Aborigine, 1838.

Tasmanian Aborigines Aboriginal people arrived in Tasmania more than 25,000 years ago. Those at Kutakina Cave in the southwest lived further south than any other people in the world. They hunted wallabies, traded with other Aborigines, and traveled long distances to collect a mineral called ochre and stones for making tools. As the climate became warmer and wetter, rain forest completely covered the Kutakina area and the people left. About 12,000 years ago the land joining Tasmania to the Australian mainland was covered by sea and Tasmania became an island. The Aborigines in Tasmania developed a new way of life and began to look different from the people on the mainland. Hunting weapons, such as boomerangs and spearthrowers, which were used in mainland Australia, were unknown in Tasmania. E uropeans forced Tasmanian Aborigines to live on mission stations (see. page 40).

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