This simple timber boomerang is typical of the earliest Indigenous tools. The boomerang is used to stun or kill animals, by throwing it at the animal. Smaller boomerangs aimed at small creatures are designed to return to the thrower.
BEFORE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
Indigenous people lived an environmentally harmonious hunting and gathering lifestyle for more than 65,000 years on the continent now known as Australia before the arrival of European settlers in 1778.
While most Indigenous people now live a
Western way of life, their strong spiritual
connection to the land, stemming from their Creation-time beliefs and their family structures and lifestyle, have remained
as key features of their culture.
No one knows for sure where the people came from, but some scientists say that Indigenous people came to Australia and became the country’s first inhabitants by island hopping through the Indonesian archipelago.
It is thought that the sea levels were lower and that Papua New Guinea and Australia were part of the same continent and that the distance between Asia and Australia was a small journey for canoes.
Scientists say people arrived on the north coast then gradually moved around and settled over the whole country.
There is evidence that by about 40,000 years ago Indigenous people were living in the Swan Valley, near Perth, and used stone tools quarried from rock that is now under the sea.
People lived near the Swan River and cooked kangaroos, emus, lizards and other meat on campfires and when the river flooded, silt covered some of these campsites.
More silt, earthquakes and changing watercourses over thousands of years smothered old campfires, tools and bones. These weren’t uncovered until clay mining during the late 20th century.
Bones found in caves in WA’s South-West area, like those at Devil’s Lair near Cape Leeuwin, show that Indigenous people ate giant kangaroos and wombats, Tasmanian devils and other creatures which are now extinct.
Indigenous people are believed to have inhabited WA’s Pilbara region for more than 30,000 years.
Original Pilbara inhabitants are believed to have been divided into about 30 socio-linguistic groups which lived off and managed the region’s natural resources, a system of intricate social relationships and strong spiritual framework.
This framework still exists in the Pilbara, and it is believed about 3,000 of the 40,000 Indigenous people in the region (16.5 per cent of the total population) still speak a variety of Indigenous languages.
While exact numbers will never be known for certain, it is believed there were more than 300,000 Indigenous people on the continent at the time of white settlement.
About 700 dialects of 150 to 300 languages were spoken by Indigenous people around the continent.
Their family structures, rituals and ceremonies, art, painting, dance, eating and hunting habits were dictated by their strong spiritual beliefs and connection with the land.
They lived in extended family ‘hearth’ groups, and moved around undefined tracts of land – their heartland – in search for food and as necessary for rituals and ceremonies.
Their approach to life was minimalist yet nurturing of members of the group. Clothing was either not worn or minimal, shelter was in easily assembled and non-permanent structures, tools were made from materials readily available on the land, there was no written language, children were cared for by the extended family group and Elders were treated as respected purveyors of important spiritual and cultural information.
* See the Heritage and Culture and the Timeline links to learn more about traditional pre-settlement Indigenous life.
