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From the time British colonization of Australia began in 1788, Indigenous Australians were characterised as being nomadic hunter-gatherers who did not engage in agriculture or other forms of food production, despite some evidence to the contrary. Rhys Jones, however, proposed in 1969 that Indigenous Australians engaged in systematic burning as a way of enhancing natural productivity, what has been termed fire-stick farming.[54] In the 1970s and 1980s archaeological research in south west Victoria established that the Gunditjmara and other groups had developed sophisticated eel farming and fish trapping systems over a period of nearly 5,000 years.[55] Professor Harry Lourandos suggested in the 1980s that there was evidence of 'intensification' in progress across Australia,[56] a process that appeared to have in progress over the preceding 5,000 years. These concepts have led Bill Gammage to argue that in effect the whole continent was a managed landscape.[2] It is now being argued that in two regions of Australia, the central west coast and eastern central Australia, forms of early agriculture were being practiced, whereby plants were being sown or planted on a large scale and the yield being stored or preserved in significant amounts.[2]:281–304[57] It also appears that the people in these regions were living in permanent settlements of significant size (over 200 residents, possibly up to 1,000), in dwellings large enough to house 10 or more people, and they exhibited high degrees of sedentism. The Nhanda and Amangu of the central west coast grew yams (Dioscorea hastifolia), while various groups in eastern central Australia (the Corners Region) planted and harvested bush onions (yaua - Cyperus bulbosus), native millet (cooly, tindil - Panicum decompositum) and a sporocarp, ngardu (Marsillea drumondii). |
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