Aboriginal_and_European_Comparative_Living_Standards_in_the_Early_Days_of_Settlement

Aboriginal and European comparative living standards in the early days of settlement As Geoffrey Blainey suggested, “Aboriginals in most parts of Australia appear to have had an impressive standard of living at the time of European invasion.”[1] By 1788, the British working class was in a state of turmoil with high unemployment, high crime rates and an ever increasing convict population which led to the decision to establish a penal colony in Australia. This essay will outline and compare the aboriginal standard of living in respect to food, shelter and well being, to British living standards of this time. The search for food was the most important activity in Aboriginal society, which involved everyone in the tribe. It was organised through a division of labour with the men hunting, using spears, boomerangs or clubs and the woman gathering using their hands, digging sticks or line and hook. Although, this was not solely the case as the men would collect plant foods while hunting and the woman would catch small game as it came their way.[2] Unfortunately the very first colonists couldn’t master the problems of farming under Australian conditions. First attempts met with disaster. The hard Australian soil blunted their spades and picks. English wheat failed to germinate and the barley rotted in the ground. As a result, they were very much dependant on the stores of flour, meat, Pease and butter which they brought from England and acquired from the Cape of Good Hope. These provisions kept them alive but they were in desperate need of green vegetable and fruits to supplement their diet.[3] Aboriginals maintained their food supply by regularly moving and living in small groups so as not to exhaust the natural food sources. In October, 1788 Philip had sent some convicts and marines inland to Rose Hill to establish another settlement. It was Philips intention to try and avoid the constant threat of famine by growing more food in the richer soils.[4] The Aboriginals, always being on the move, appeared to Europeans to be on the edge of starvation, and as William Dampier, after his voyages in 1688 and 1689 to the west Coast of what was then New Holland, described them as “the miserablest people in the world.”[5] What he did not seem to consider was, that as hunter gatherers, they were highly knowledgeable and able to live off the land with ease and little effort, providing them with plenty of time to enjoy a satisfying spiritual, ceremonial and social life.[6] The early settlers couldn’t believe that the native Aboriginals found plenty of food. To them they seemed to be living off the lands second rate foods. What they did not realise, was that the Aboriginals preferred what they ate to the many varieties that they could have quite easily caught or gathered. A common mistake was to imagine that the Aboriginals had little sustenance or were desperate for food, as there was a huge variety of native foods in Australia before the coming of the Europeans, bringing with them potatoes, cattle and wheat. Geoffrey Blainey wrote that “one achievement of Aboriginals was their ability to survive in vast arid regions where the white settlements were to fail.”[7] There was abundance of fish in Sydney harbour and plentiful supplies were being caught by the first settlers. When fresh food was most needed however, for unaccountable reasons, the fish became scarce and the only fresh food to be seen at the tables, was Kangaroo, birds and sometimes snakes, of those fortunate to have guns [8] The weeks following after the ships had landed on the banks of Sydney cove, the duty of building houses began. At first all were housed in small simple canvas tents, the civil and military officers, the marines and the convicts alike. Governor Philip however was supplied with a pre-cut canvas house constructed in London, while the stores and provisions that were to sustain the colony until the arrival of the second fleet, were housed under wretched covers of thatch. Many, convicts and military alike, complained that the flimsy canvas should be their only shelter against the harsh Australian sun, as they set about the tasks of building more permanent dwellings of timber and stone. And as with the problems they encountered in the forming of gardens, problems arose in the construction of houses. Not only were there too few skilled workers, the only available timber was Australian hard wood which quickly blunted and bent their tools and there was no suitable lime to mix with the cement.[9] Australia, having such a temperate climate for the majority of the year over most parts of the continent, the Aboriginals, being of a semi nomad society, didn’t have much need for permanent shelters. This however didn’t mean that from time to time and in different regions that they didn’t build temporary dwellings. Near swamps in the northern parts of Australia, the Aboriginals built huts shaped similar to beehives using grass and bark to clad their huts.[10] On long exposed beaches they would build wind breaks of leafy branches to protect them, and their small fires for warmth, from strong winds. In the wet season after heavy rains in the northern parts of Queensland, the Aboriginals would strip the bark from the Eucalyptus tree know as the Stringy Bark to build more permanent camps of barked roofed huts.[11] But, as a whole, the Aboriginal way of life didn’t lend itself to time or need of more robust and substantial dwellings. Clothing of the convicts, supplied by the government, for a year was, two jackets, 4 pairs of woollen drawers, one hat, three shirts, three trousers, and three pairs of shoes. The voyage from England and the Australian conditions after just a few short months, the convicts clothing which had not been very hard wearing, was starting to show the signs of wear. Even the marines were seen standing guard without wearing any shoes.[12] Aboriginals didn’t have a need for clothes and was suggested, that the Aboriginals perhaps had a physiological thermostat[13] which enabled them to cope with cold weather and requiring less food than that of the Europeans In order to keep them warm, and unlike the white settlers, the Aboriginals did not need an elevated intake of food in the colder months to provide warmth, therefore their intake of food was not needlessly wasted.[14] The convict’s behaviour was disgusting and appalled those who came into contact with them, as some had even taken advantage of the festivities of February 7, a ceremony to take possession formally of the new colony, to steal food. Also the conditions that influenced the convict’s lives apparently confirmed them in their incorrigibility. Samuel Marsden, the censorious colonial Chaplin, complained to Governor Hunter in 1789 that riot and dissipation, licentious and immorality pervaded every part of the settlement.[15] By June and July 1788, most of the colony had begun to dispar. Before the Fleet had sailed, the British government had hopes that the new settlement in Australia,, would be self sufficient in two years. Unfortunately Phillip had come to realise that this would not be the case. “No country offers less assistance to the first settlers than this does.” He wrote; “nor do I think that any country could be more disadvantageously placed with respect to support from the mother county, on which for a few years we must entirely depend.”[16] The Aboriginals did not have a high standard of living compared to the present standards of Sydney. By the standards of the 1800’s however, their material life could be compared favourably.[17] The Aboriginals quest for food was a dominant part of their social and cultural life. The colonies priority too, was to establish gardens and crops for a self sustaining settlement. Their want for food, comfortable dwellings and an easier beginning could not have been left more wanting. As for the original inhabitants, their way of living had been one of gradual adaptation, over many generations, with the land and seasons of Australia’s unpredictable and harsh climate in concert with their spiritual beliefs. The Aboriginals have been sustaining themselves in the hunter gatherer lifestyle for 40,000 years or perhaps longer, and of all the economic systems that humans have devised, hunting and gathering is the most ancient and long lived, and had survived longer in Australia perhaps than anywhere else in the world.[18] So can we draw a direct contrast' The Aboriginals, with ample leisure time that seemed to be their preferred standard of living. The first white settlers, who were to endure for many years, hardships and starvation beyond normal human limits. Geoffrey Blainey perhaps put it best by saying, “In essence, the contrast between nomadic and settled peoples was so vast that neither could easily understand or assess the standard of living of the other.[19] ----------------------- [1] Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 217 [2] Dingle Tony, Aboriginal Economy(Victoria: Penguin Books, 1991), 12 [3] Cathcart Michael, Manning Clark’s History of Australia(Victoria: Melbourne university Press), 13-16 [4] Article, The first Australian Governors 1971, 1-29 [5] White Richard, Inventing Australia(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 2 [6] Dingle Tony, Aboriginal Economy(Victoria: Penguin Books, 1991), 4 [7] Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 218 [8] Article, The first Australian Governors 1971, 1-29 [9] Cathcart Michael, Manning Clark’s History of Australia(Victoria: Melbourne university Press), 13 [10] Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 146 [11]Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 186 [12] Article, The first Australian Governors 1971, 1-29 [13] Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 19 [14] Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 191-192 [15] Macintyre Stuart, A Concise History of Australia(Melbourne: Cambridge, 2009), 42 [16] Shaw A.G.L, Convicts and the Colonies(Melbourne: Melbourne University press, 1977), 60 [17] Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 225 [18] Dingle Tony, Aboriginal Economy(Victoria: Penguin Books, 1991), 2 [19] Blainey Geoffrey, Triumph of the Nomads(Melbourne: Sun Books, 1983), 217-218