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Before 1788

It is not known how many people lived in Australia before the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. In 1930 the anthropologist Radcliffe-Brown estimated that the pre- contact Aboriginal population was around 300000, with about 40 000 in New South Wales. More recent studies indicate that the figure was probably around one million for the whole continent and much greater than 40 000 for New South Wales.

According to many Aboriginal beliefs people have been in Australia since the beginning - the Dreaming. It is known from the work of archaeologists that human occupation of Australia dates back at least 60 000 years. The first people probably came from South-East Asia. Where they landed, whether there was more than one 'wave' of people, which routes they took as they spread out over the continent, and how their numbers increased are matters for much study and discussion. However, by the time the British arrived in 1788, all parts of Australia were part of the territory of a particular linguistic group or 'tribe', This occupation and use of the entire continent provides the legal and moral basis for Aboriginal land-right claims to certain areas today.

Social organisation

Before European settlement, the area that was to become New South Wales hosted seventy or more Aboriginal languages and dialects, although views regarding this number vary considerably and some estimates are significantly higher (Hosking et al 2000). These 'traditional' or 'ancestral' languages, as they are sometimes referred to, include:

Muruwari, Ngiyampaa, Paakantji and Yandruwandha in northwest NSW
Mathi-mathi, Paakantji and Wiradjuri in southwest NSW
Gamilaraay, Muruwari, Ngiyampaa, Wangkumara, Wiradjuri and Yuwaalaraay in central NSW
Anewan (Nganyaywana), Birpai, Bundjalung, Dhangadi, Gadhang, Gamilaraay, Gidabul, Gumbaynggirr, Ngarrabul, Wonarua, Yaygirr in northeast NSW
Awabakal, Bidawal, Dharawal, Dharuk, Dhurga, Gundangara, Monero, Ngarigu, Ngunawal, Walbanga, Wandandian and Yorta Yorta in southeast NSW.

Each of these groups spoke a different language or dialect, but people could usually speak the language of neighbouring people as well as their own.

There was much contact between various groups for trade as well as for initiations, marriages and other ceremonies. While some groups had formed political or trade alliances, others were 'at war'. Alliances between the various groups, as well as group boundaries, no doubt changed over the thousands of years Aboriginal people lived in New South Wales.

The language groups were each composed of several clans. Each clan, through religious law, was responsible for a certain area of land. It was through clan membership that individuals gained their special links with the land. All the people in a clan belonged to the same descent group (either patrilineal or matrilineal). Members of the same clan could not marry one another, so a person's mother and father would have come from different clans. In areas where clan membership was based on patrilineal descent groups, children belonged to the same clan as the father. Where matrilineal descent groups occurred, children belonged to the same clan as the mother. Clans were associated with a particular species of animal which was a Dreaming ancestor.

The people who came together to live or hunt and gather food did not necessarily belong to the same clan. These groups, often referred to as bands or communities, usually consisted of one or more families. They were the basic economic unit of Aboriginal society.

Spiritual life

People throughout New South Wales (except for a small area in the north-west corner) held certain common beliefs which were part of a religious system that existed across south-eastern Australia. They believed in a creative deity of extreme importance. although people in different areas had different names for this deity - for example. Baiami, Bunjil. Nurelli or Nurrundere. There were also regional variations in some of the details of the religious beliefs, and in the way some of the ceremonies were performed.

Baiami lived on earth during the Dreaming. The Dreaming, or Dreamtime, was the 'creation' period when, with the assistance of various other supernatural beings and ancestral heroes, Baiami created the landscape and vegetation, gave life to animals and humans and established the laws of Aboriginal society. After creating the world, Baiami left the earth to live in the sky. From there he watched over the people to ensure that the customs and ceremonies were correctly carried out.

Some of the other Dreaming beings are associated with particular landscape features which they created or at which they performed certain feats. These are now referred to as 'natural mythological sites' or 'sacred sites', and there are many throughout New South Wales. They are of continuing importance to Aboriginal people today.

Religious and spiritual beliefs once affected all aspects of Aboriginal life, including which foods people were permitted to eat, marriage laws, and the designs that were carved or painted on implements and weapons.

Knowledge of the law and of religion and of the Dreaming stories was acquired progressively. The elders in each group possessed the traditional knowledge and passed it on to the younger generations at particular ceremonies. Initiation ceremonies, which marked the passage from childhood to adulthood, were one of the avenues by which this knowledge was passed on. Tooth avulsion (the removal of a particular tooth) and scarification (making cuts on various parts of the body to form raised scars, called cicatrices) were usually part of the initiation rites. In a society which did not have reading and writing, the body provided a visual marker of a person's ritual progress through life.

Today much detailed religious knowledge has been lost due to the effects of white settlement. However, around the State groups are reviving some of the traditional practices, and are asking that their sacred objects, used in ceremonies, be returned to them from museum collections.

The people of New South Wales had various burial practices. Bodies might simply be buried in the ground, or cremated before burial. Sometimes the bones were buried after the body had been exposed on a platform. Some bodies were placed in hollow trees. In 1788 David Collins, the Judge Advocate for the first British settlement, recorded that, in the Sydney area, older people were cremated and then buried, while young people were given a simple burial. A mound of stone or earth, or in some areas a structure of logs or bark, was often built over the grave. Grave goods were buried with some people.

There were various taboos associated with death. A campsite was often abandoned for a period of time if someone died there, and use of a dead person's name was avoided, a practice still in use in some areas today.

Art and decoration

Aboriginal people in New South Wales expressed themselves artistically in many different ways and on many different surfaces, including:

• painted and scarified body decoration (cicatrices)
• painted and carved designs on wooden tools and weapons
• incised designs on the inside of skin cloaks
• woven designs in basketry
• paintings, drawings. stencils and engravings in rock shelters
• engravings on open rock platforms
• carved designs on living trees
• ground sculptures.

Bark paintings are also known from certain areas such as the south coast. Although some of this work was for decoration, much was associated with the ritual and ceremonial side of life. The designs and figures depicted varied across the State. Many of the materials used to produce artworks (wood, fibre, feathers,the human body itself) have perished, but important examples remain in the form of rock paintings and engravings, carved trees and wooden artefacts.

Living off the land

Across Australia Aboriginal people lived by hunting animals, fishing and collecting plant foods. It was mainly the men who hunted and fished, while the women gathered smaller animals, shellfish and plant foods such as yams, fruits and berries. Certain plant foods, such as the nuts of the Macrozamia (Burrawang palm), had to be treated to remove poisons before eating.

To harvest food resources, groups moved within defined areas, often called ranges. The amount of time spent in any one place was largely determined by the amount of food available. Sometimes important foods were only available seasonally, prompting more or less regular movements throughout the year.

New South Wales contains a range of different environments, which gave rise to many different subsistence practices. The main animals or plants eaten, the degree of mobility, the nature of seasonal movements, and the foods eaten at different times of the year varied from region to region throughout the State.

For people living on the coastal plain, the sea, estuaries, rivers and the land all provided food. Fish and shellfish were an important part of the diet for those groups living on the coast or estuaries. In most hunting and gathering societies, fishing was done by men; however, in coastal south-eastern New South Wales, women also fished. The two sexes used different equipment: spears for the men, and hooks and lines for the women.

On the dry plains of western New South Wales people relied more on land animals such as kangaroos and emus. Grass seeds (Panicum sp.) were an important vegetable staple.

In the inland riverine areas, such as the Murray River, fish were the major food source, but shellfish, land animals (particularly possums), water birds and vegetable foods (water-lily tubers, as well as yams and seeds) were also important.

In the alpine areas in the south-east of the State people gathered on the peaks in the summer months to feast on the Bogong moths which gather among the rocky tors in their thousands.

Equipment

Tools and weapons were made of wood, bark, reed and other plant materials, as well as stone, bone and shell. The design of the implements and the materials from which they were made varied according to regional traditions as well as the materials locally available. Important materials not readily available (for example, certain types of stone) were obtained by visiting the source of the material or by trade with groups in other regions.

All groups in New South Wales used the same basic range of items - spears, spear throwers, clubs, shields, boomerangs, stone axes, digging sticks and containers such as net bags, bowls and baskets.
However, the toolkit varied according to each group's subsistence practices. Fishing spears, fish traps and bark canoes were used in coastal and riverine areas; fishing hooks (of shell) and lines were used along the coast. The people of western New South Wales and along the Murray River had special grinding dishes for grass seeds. Along the Murray, Murrumbidgee and lower Darling Rivers large nets of fibre were widely used for catching ducks, yabbies and fish. Throughout Aboriginal Australia fire was used in hunting and to 'clean' the country.

Shelter and clothing

Huts were constructed using a frame of branches or boughs, with sheets of bark, leafy branches or grass laid across. Methods of construction varied, some huts being quite substantial and others more casual bark structures. In sandstone or other rocky country, overhangs in cliffs or under boulders were used as overnight campsites or as 'retreats' during the day in which to eat a meal or shelter from the weather. The walls of these shelters were sometimes decorated with paintings or stencils.

Aboriginal people generally wore no clothing except for ornamental bands and belts made from hair or animal fur. In some areas - for example, in the mountain ranges, and along parts of the Murray River and the north coast -people wore cloaks in winter. These were usually made from the skins of possums or flying foxes.

Hairstyles varied from group to group. Many groups decorated their hair with small objects such as parts of plants, animal bones and teeth.

The arrival of european settlers changed Aboriginal cultures for ever. Much of our information about Aboriginal life before contact comes from the records of the first British colonists and later explorers and settlers, the collections of artefacts held in various museums, as well as the oral traditions of present-day Aboriginal people. Yet another, different source of information is the archaeological record.

Source:
Aboriginal Australia
Aboriginal People of NSW
Produced by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission 1997
(c) Comonwealth of Australia 1997
ISBN 0 664 10152 0