The Necessity of Reparation for Historic Injustices

Fascinating read on Northern Australian trade routes pre Colonisation.
The more that is uncovered pre European invasion the more incredibly rich the culture is showing to have been.
Would be unreal to discover more about how this place worked before we came along and changed it forever.
Read on.....
"AUSTRALIA’S PRE-COLONIAL SEAFARING TRADE
Groundbreaking archaeological research has confirmed scientifically what Indigenous peoples already knew, that first Australians were making huge overseas voyages to trade in a vast international network at least three millennia earlier than previously thought.
The common perception is that Australia’s culture evolved like its flora and fauna, in profound isolation across a deep history until Europeans arrived.
The archaeological record now shows as far back as 3000 years ago or more people from mainland Australia were building ocean-going double outrigger canoes up to 20 metres long and loading them up with crew and valuable goods and sailing thousands of kilometres to trade in distant lands.
Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation director Kenneth McLean, a Dingaal Traditional Owner of Jiigurru, or Lizard Island, 33 kilometres off the Queensland coast says the discovery of artefacts that demonstrate the far-flung trade links of people from Cape York may enable his people to share a story they already knew with world.
“Our elders passed knowledge down through generations for us, teaching us how the old people were living back in the day, way before Captain Cook ever came,” McLean says.
“Hopefully we can educate Australians and the people around the world on how old our country is, and how old the international trade is.”
It’s commonly known that Makassan traders from the island of Sulawesi, in modern day Indonesia, were sailing south to Australia several hundred years ago, in the 1700s. Up until 1907 they traded iron and other goods with the locals of Arnhem Land and the Kimberleys in exchange for trepang, also known as sea cucumbers, and sold them into China.
Despite the cultural heritage of traditional owners along the coastline of Cape York, it is not well known that Aboriginal people had been sailing across the Coral Sea for thousands of years to trade.
About 3500 years ago the Lapita people, who colonised the western Pacific, came down from northern Vietnam or southern China or Taiwan and moved south to the Bismark Archipelago north of New Guinea and migrated eastwards to the Solomon Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu.
Archaeologist Sean Ulm is the deputy director at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. He says the distinctive pottery of the Lapita is an archaeological calling card of their migration across Oceania.
It was accepted knowledge that Lapita migration from its starting place in the northern hemisphere only ever moved eastwards across the Bismark Archipelago to the northern New Guinea coast and then radiated across the Pacific.
Experts had uncovered no evidence that these seafaring people sailed west along the southern New Guinea coastline, until 2008 when a team of archaeologists started digging at a site in Caution Bay around 30 kilometres west of Port Moresby, ahead of a planned gas plant development.
Professor Ulm says he and a team of archaeologists “almost immediately” found Lapita pottery that was radiocarbon dated to 2800 years old.
“The team published that work for the first time in 2011 and it was met in the academic community with a lot of critique that it couldn’t possibly be Lapita, because Lapita people didn’t go westward along the southern New Guinea coast, they only went east (into the Pacific),” Ulm says.
“But, you know, here we are 10 years later and none of those critics disagree with us now. So it was a huge paradigm shift in the way people thought about the colonisation of the huge part of the planet and opened the door to suggest, if these people were in southern New Guinea 3000 years ago, where else could they be? They have watercraft, technology and seagoing technology.”
Anthropological archaeologist Ian McNiven also works with the Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. He says archaeologists also started finding pottery in Torres Strait around 20 years ago, but there was “no historical or ethnographic or oral history of pottery production by Torres Strait Islanders”.
They started working with communities on excavations and found pottery for the first time. It was buried one metre under the ground, relatively deep in archaeological terms. The shards of pottery were discovered on Lizard Island by Ulm and McNiven in 2017.
“Everybody’s was saying ‘hey, that’s very different’. I’m saying bloody oath that’s different! That was unexpected,” McNiven says.
He says it appears pottery was traded into Torres Strait from New Guinea 3000 years ago, and some was produced locally. Finding a connection between the Lapita and Torres Strait, once they were known to have moved westwards across New Guinea, was not entirely unexpected, he says. But what came next on Lizard Island was a bolt from the blue.
“What was unexpected is finding similar pottery, of similar age on Lizard Island. It is 600 kilometres down the Queensland coast and that makes you say hang on, this is a serious game changer,” Professor McNiven says.
It was a seminal moment.
“You can literally hold a piece of pottery when we’re doing excavations on Lizard Island and pull it out from a metre underground, a piece the size of your thumbnail, and you say: everything changes after this,” McNiven says. “A little tiny piece like that changes the way we view the history of our continent and its interactions in the past, the Indigenous peoples with the outside world.
“Now we know Aboriginal peoples of North Queensland have these ancient connections going up through Torres Strait and into New Guinea and the pottery is telling us that it’s the calling card of people who are interacting over literally thousands of kilometres.”
McNiven, based at Monash University, says the evidence suggested it was not just the goods, but the knowledge of pottery making that had been passed on to people in Queensland.
“That Lizard Island pottery looks like it was made locally,” he says. “All the minerals in the pottery are essentially what you get around Lizard Island and that part of Cape York.”
Professor Ulm, of James Cook University, explained the pottery shards are smoking gun evidence that overturn the idea of Australia’s ancient isolation.
“There’s long been arguments that after people colonised Australia, somehow they lost that watercraft navigation technology, but we simply don’t know that because watercraft made out of organic materials don’t survive in the archaeological record,” he says.
“So these pottery finds, for example that we have on Lizard Island or in Torres Strait, show us that people are voyaging. Even though we don’t have the watercraft, it’s indirect evidence that people were making these voyages and we can trace how this knowledge or the objects themselves are moving.”
The historical evidence of trade across communities in the Coral Sea is extensive. These recent finds along with artefacts collected by 18th and 19th Century European voyagers shows a complex trading web across the region where goods particular to one location - including bamboo smoking pipes, canoes, spears and necklaces, as well as language and cultural practices - were passed back and forth across a long network. This has given rise to the concept of the Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere.
Piecing together what was traded and by whom shows it involved hundreds of clans and dozens of language groups.
The groundbreaking pottery archaeology and evidence of ancient trading networks is showcased in a new exhibition, developed in partnership with the Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation and Hope Vale Congress Aboriginal Corporation. Connections across the Coral Sea is at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville. It will move to Brisbane in June.
Professor Ulm says evidence for two-way trade, from New Guinea to Australia and vice-versa, overturned false stereotypes that had prevailed in historical assumptions about Aboriginal peoples.
“There was a prevailing view throughout the 19th and early 20th Century that any traded goods came south from New Guinea, but nothing went north,” Professor Ulm says.
“This was feeding into a racist construct that Aboriginal cultures are somehow simplistic and New Guinea and Melanesian cultures are somehow advanced were of course objects would only come south.
“But even in the 19th century, in the early 20th century, when writers began writing that, it wasn’t supported by the evidence then.
“We know that the Gulf of Carpentaria was linked to Adelaide, and Broome was linked to Alice Springs. But if you know what you’re doing you can cover a lot bigger distances in a boat than you can walking, carrying all your goods with you.”
Professor McNiven says Western science and Australia are “catching up with what Indigenous communities have known for a very long time”.
Australia was seen to be the only continent on the planet that didn’t have a pottery tradition, and that sort of played into all sorts of colonial representations of Indigenous people as being primitive or backward,” he says.
He says even though there were historical records of Australia’s international trading links preceding European settlement, it wasn’t studied systematically until the 1970s.
“Matthew Flinders was cruising around Australia in 1802 and comes into Arnhem Land and sees a whole fleet of Makassan vessels and goes ‘Excuse me, what’s going on here?’, I thought the British were the ones making the outside connections. But groups like the Yolngu Aboriginal community were going, come on, keep up. We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years mate.”
- by Mike Foley Sydney Morning Herald / The Age"

^^^ good read SR , so much history that we don’t know about . It would be interesting to read some of Chinese history earliest interactions .

Great call @supa. I'm sure there'd be early recordings somewhere from way back in Chinese history. All these threads are slowly piecing together. It's unreal watching the history slowly unfold to help paint a picture beyond the frivolity of the last 200 years.

Australia is more racist than even i gave it credit for. And i really thought it was racist already.
Shiver me timber.

The trading of Trepang is a whole other story.
It was going on for centuries, Indonesian seafarers making their way to Australia, purchasing and trading sea cucumber.
Routes into and out of Australia were established at a time way earlier than first thought by European settlers.
Our Aborigines were way ahead of time of so called ‘developed’ countries to our west.
It shames me to still think of how ignorant, arrogant and dismissive our own and other countries have been towards the longest continual culture of a human population on earth.
How about, just for once, we champion these people for what they really are, incredible resilient achievers.

Sean Ulm is a close colleague of my ex wife, I’ve met him on several occasions, wonderful guy. AW

Okay SR we have been agreeing too much of late, and we need a break from that USA thread.

IMHO it seems like a bit of a straw clutching article.

I dont see any evidence whatsoever in that article for the intro claim.

"that first Australians were making huge overseas voyages"

There is evidence Indonesians/Makasar people came here and traded for sea cucumber, there is even cave paintings of their boats.

But If FNP had that same open ocean sea going ability and were doing the same thing, they would have highly likely recorded what they had seen elsewhere when they returned and brought back ideas they had seen that we would see groups in say the north area take on different ideas with clear influence from the places they visited, they also would likely have brought back seeds of plants useful which would result in seeing non native plants in the areas that these boats departed from.

We would see obvious influence's from the people of closest areas of Sumba, Rote, East Timor, likely through adoption or influence of their designs and motifs in cave art etc

And the idea there is no boats because they are made of wood is silly, when white fella come they would have recorded seeing these large sea going boats, " ocean-going double outrigger canoes up to 20 metres long" (with sails) once they started going elsewhere they wouldn't stop they would continue and expand on the journeys and boats.

No doubt FNP in the far Cape York area had interaction with Torres's straight and PNG people, the distance between island's there isn't great, large canoes that FNP had could easily do those distances even paddling (you should see the distances between islands they do in tiny canoes in Indo) and you would expect in most cases islands could be seen in the distance to travel too, thats very realistic, but traveling hundreds of Kilometres towards nothing but open blue water making it and returning is not, even if they made the journey one way returning is another thing.

BTW. There could have been belief's/stories/mythology of what was out there that prevented any motivation to see and anyone that tried and didn't return would confirm these beliefs.

A quick google shows Lapita pottery is found in PNG as is other pottery, so obviously it came here the same way it got there or came here via PNG.

It's surprising that FNP really never had pottery, but then again being nomadic you dont want to be carting around heavy clay pots and there wasn't any domesticated animal's to help move these items.

southernraw wrote:

Fascinating read on Northern Australian trade routes pre Colonisation.
The more that is uncovered pre European invasion the more incredibly rich the culture is showing to have been.
Would be unreal to discover more about how this place worked before we came along and changed it forever.
Read on.....
"AUSTRALIA’S PRE-COLONIAL SEAFARING TRADE
Groundbreaking archaeological research has confirmed scientifically what Indigenous peoples already knew, that first Australians were making huge overseas voyages to trade in a vast international network at least three millennia earlier than previously thought.
The common perception is that Australia’s culture evolved like its flora and fauna, in profound isolation across a deep history until Europeans arrived.
The archaeological record now shows as far back as 3000 years ago or more people from mainland Australia were building ocean-going double outrigger canoes up to 20 metres long and loading them up with crew and valuable goods and sailing thousands of kilometres to trade in distant lands.
Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation director Kenneth McLean, a Dingaal Traditional Owner of Jiigurru, or Lizard Island, 33 kilometres off the Queensland coast says the discovery of artefacts that demonstrate the far-flung trade links of people from Cape York may enable his people to share a story they already knew with world.
“Our elders passed knowledge down through generations for us, teaching us how the old people were living back in the day, way before Captain Cook ever came,” McLean says.
“Hopefully we can educate Australians and the people around the world on how old our country is, and how old the international trade is.”
It’s commonly known that Makassan traders from the island of Sulawesi, in modern day Indonesia, were sailing south to Australia several hundred years ago, in the 1700s. Up until 1907 they traded iron and other goods with the locals of Arnhem Land and the Kimberleys in exchange for trepang, also known as sea cucumbers, and sold them into China.
Despite the cultural heritage of traditional owners along the coastline of Cape York, it is not well known that Aboriginal people had been sailing across the Coral Sea for thousands of years to trade.
About 3500 years ago the Lapita people, who colonised the western Pacific, came down from northern Vietnam or southern China or Taiwan and moved south to the Bismark Archipelago north of New Guinea and migrated eastwards to the Solomon Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu.
Archaeologist Sean Ulm is the deputy director at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. He says the distinctive pottery of the Lapita is an archaeological calling card of their migration across Oceania.
It was accepted knowledge that Lapita migration from its starting place in the northern hemisphere only ever moved eastwards across the Bismark Archipelago to the northern New Guinea coast and then radiated across the Pacific.
Experts had uncovered no evidence that these seafaring people sailed west along the southern New Guinea coastline, until 2008 when a team of archaeologists started digging at a site in Caution Bay around 30 kilometres west of Port Moresby, ahead of a planned gas plant development.
Professor Ulm says he and a team of archaeologists “almost immediately” found Lapita pottery that was radiocarbon dated to 2800 years old.
“The team published that work for the first time in 2011 and it was met in the academic community with a lot of critique that it couldn’t possibly be Lapita, because Lapita people didn’t go westward along the southern New Guinea coast, they only went east (into the Pacific),” Ulm says.
“But, you know, here we are 10 years later and none of those critics disagree with us now. So it was a huge paradigm shift in the way people thought about the colonisation of the huge part of the planet and opened the door to suggest, if these people were in southern New Guinea 3000 years ago, where else could they be? They have watercraft, technology and seagoing technology.”
Anthropological archaeologist Ian McNiven also works with the Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. He says archaeologists also started finding pottery in Torres Strait around 20 years ago, but there was “no historical or ethnographic or oral history of pottery production by Torres Strait Islanders”.
They started working with communities on excavations and found pottery for the first time. It was buried one metre under the ground, relatively deep in archaeological terms. The shards of pottery were discovered on Lizard Island by Ulm and McNiven in 2017.
“Everybody’s was saying ‘hey, that’s very different’. I’m saying bloody oath that’s different! That was unexpected,” McNiven says.
He says it appears pottery was traded into Torres Strait from New Guinea 3000 years ago, and some was produced locally. Finding a connection between the Lapita and Torres Strait, once they were known to have moved westwards across New Guinea, was not entirely unexpected, he says. But what came next on Lizard Island was a bolt from the blue.
“What was unexpected is finding similar pottery, of similar age on Lizard Island. It is 600 kilometres down the Queensland coast and that makes you say hang on, this is a serious game changer,” Professor McNiven says.
It was a seminal moment.
“You can literally hold a piece of pottery when we’re doing excavations on Lizard Island and pull it out from a metre underground, a piece the size of your thumbnail, and you say: everything changes after this,” McNiven says. “A little tiny piece like that changes the way we view the history of our continent and its interactions in the past, the Indigenous peoples with the outside world.
“Now we know Aboriginal peoples of North Queensland have these ancient connections going up through Torres Strait and into New Guinea and the pottery is telling us that it’s the calling card of people who are interacting over literally thousands of kilometres.”
McNiven, based at Monash University, says the evidence suggested it was not just the goods, but the knowledge of pottery making that had been passed on to people in Queensland.
“That Lizard Island pottery looks like it was made locally,” he says. “All the minerals in the pottery are essentially what you get around Lizard Island and that part of Cape York.”
Professor Ulm, of James Cook University, explained the pottery shards are smoking gun evidence that overturn the idea of Australia’s ancient isolation.
“There’s long been arguments that after people colonised Australia, somehow they lost that watercraft navigation technology, but we simply don’t know that because watercraft made out of organic materials don’t survive in the archaeological record,” he says.
“So these pottery finds, for example that we have on Lizard Island or in Torres Strait, show us that people are voyaging. Even though we don’t have the watercraft, it’s indirect evidence that people were making these voyages and we can trace how this knowledge or the objects themselves are moving.”
The historical evidence of trade across communities in the Coral Sea is extensive. These recent finds along with artefacts collected by 18th and 19th Century European voyagers shows a complex trading web across the region where goods particular to one location - including bamboo smoking pipes, canoes, spears and necklaces, as well as language and cultural practices - were passed back and forth across a long network. This has given rise to the concept of the Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere.
Piecing together what was traded and by whom shows it involved hundreds of clans and dozens of language groups.
The groundbreaking pottery archaeology and evidence of ancient trading networks is showcased in a new exhibition, developed in partnership with the Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation and Hope Vale Congress Aboriginal Corporation. Connections across the Coral Sea is at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville. It will move to Brisbane in June.
Professor Ulm says evidence for two-way trade, from New Guinea to Australia and vice-versa, overturned false stereotypes that had prevailed in historical assumptions about Aboriginal peoples.
“There was a prevailing view throughout the 19th and early 20th Century that any traded goods came south from New Guinea, but nothing went north,” Professor Ulm says.
“This was feeding into a racist construct that Aboriginal cultures are somehow simplistic and New Guinea and Melanesian cultures are somehow advanced were of course objects would only come south.
“But even in the 19th century, in the early 20th century, when writers began writing that, it wasn’t supported by the evidence then.
“We know that the Gulf of Carpentaria was linked to Adelaide, and Broome was linked to Alice Springs. But if you know what you’re doing you can cover a lot bigger distances in a boat than you can walking, carrying all your goods with you.”
Professor McNiven says Western science and Australia are “catching up with what Indigenous communities have known for a very long time”.
Australia was seen to be the only continent on the planet that didn’t have a pottery tradition, and that sort of played into all sorts of colonial representations of Indigenous people as being primitive or backward,” he says.
He says even though there were historical records of Australia’s international trading links preceding European settlement, it wasn’t studied systematically until the 1970s.
“Matthew Flinders was cruising around Australia in 1802 and comes into Arnhem Land and sees a whole fleet of Makassan vessels and goes ‘Excuse me, what’s going on here?’, I thought the British were the ones making the outside connections. But groups like the Yolngu Aboriginal community were going, come on, keep up. We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years mate.”
- by Mike Foley Sydney Morning Herald / The Age"

Fascinating, thanks for posting that.

indo-dreaming wrote:

Okay SR we have been agreeing too much of late, and we need a break from that USA thread.

IMHO it seems like a bit of a straw clutching article.

I dont see any evidence whatsoever in that article for the intro claim.

"that first Australians were making huge overseas voyages"

There is evidence Indonesians/Makasar people came here and traded for sea cucumber, there is even cave paintings of their boats.

But If FNP had that same open ocean sea going ability and were doing the same thing, they would have highly likely recorded what they had seen elsewhere when they returned and brought back ideas they had seen that we would see groups in say the north area take on different ideas with clear influence from the places they visited, they also would likely have brought back seeds of plants useful which would result in seeing non native plants in the areas that these boats departed from.

We would see obvious influence's from the people of closest areas of Sumba, Rote, East Timor, likely through adoption or influence of their designs and motifs in cave art etc

And the idea there is no boats because they are made of wood is silly, when white fella come they would have recorded seeing these large sea going boats, " ocean-going double outrigger canoes up to 20 metres long" (with sails) once they started going elsewhere they wouldn't stop they would continue and expand on the journeys and boats.

No doubt FNP in the far Cape York area had interaction with Torres's straight and PNG people, the distance between island's there isn't great, large canoes that FNP had could easily do those distances even paddling (you should see the distances between islands they do in tiny canoes in Indo) and you would expect in most cases islands could be seen in the distance to travel too, thats very realistic, but traveling hundreds of Kilometres towards nothing but open blue water making it and returning is not, even if they made the journey one way returning is another thing.

BTW. There could have been belief's/stories/mythology of what was out there that prevented any motivation to see and anyone that tried and didn't return would confirm these beliefs.

A quick google shows Lapita pottery is found in PNG as is other pottery, so obviously it came here the same way it got there or came here via PNG.

It's surprising that FNP really never had pottery, but then again being nomadic you dont want to be carting around heavy clay pots and there wasn't any domesticated animal's to help move these items.

Indo, agreed, much prefer this trench warfare than the niceties with you.
Having said that, i read your post, and i can't confirm nor deny anything you post, i simply don't know.
I do know this is an extremely remote part of Australia. Can't imagine cook and his band of merry followers got around these parts too much in early settlement.
Is there recorded evidence? Maybe there was. Maybe it hasn't been found. Maybe it deteriorated. Story? don't know. Good points you raise but it seems alot more well researched than both you and i have done, but i'll look into it some more over the next few weeks/months and try to learn more. Not trying to disprove what you say. If it is true, i think it's fascinating, and based on the story and discussion from AW above etc, it seems to hold some legitimate truths. But yeah, fair to point out a lack of evidence, because, like i said, i don't know and i didn't actually fact check it so my bad i guess.
Will get back to this at some point.

Either way it is an interesting topic.

It would be surprising if there wasn't more Indonesian contact with FNP than they think.

Madagacar is pretty far from Indonesia yet there is evidence that they sailed there over 1,000 years ago there is even DNA links.

It would interesting to see or know what the DNA studies say with FNP & Indonesian contact is there FNP DNA found in areas of Indonesia population or Indonesian DNA found in some FNP communities?

"30 Indonesian Women (Accidentally) Founded Madagascar"

"Previous genetic research showed that, surprisingly, instead of coming from Africa, the people living on the island off the east coast of Africa seem to have come from Indonesia, another island nation a quarter of the world, or some 3,500 miles (about 5,600 kilometers), away."
https://www.livescience.com/19188-indonesian-women-founded-madagascar.html

BTW. this is a real cool read, quite in depth.

"Dreamtime voyagers: Aboriginal Australians in early modern Makassar"

https://mikedashhistory.com/2016/10/31/dreamtime-voyagers-australian-abo...

Agree...thanx southernraw & crew...much to explore in this regard...

truebluebasher WEDNESDAY, 14 JUN 2023

Early navigators judged population by lack of resource tided upon shorelines...as in Coconuts!
First Nation studied Seed Pods upon the shore & crocodiles bodysurf tides between continents.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/100607-science-animal...
The Aboriginal Tidal Raft was born to surf intercontinental tides off the moon...island hopping to China.
Check this story...Debris from Indo / Taiwan / Thailand / China washes up on Little Bondi NT.
Meaning...if any surf these tidal waves ya gotta surf ashore or wrestle crocodiles.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-23/plastic-waste-growing-on-arnhem-l...

Now check this similar Story...Balinese say beach waste is tided from Java. ( Also notice it being another wave beach )
So we can easily assume that Island hoppers must learn to surf to freely exit each paylode ashore of tidal front.
We see big surf / tides brought these shown payloads...which opens up possibility of Rafting larger Pontoons of goods!
We also know that a shoreline wipeout would render the trade mission a failure & or death, even by tribe.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/5/balis-beaches-blighted-by-rubbis...

Ya see...just sit on any of these rafts of timber & ya can island hop with purpose by the tides!
Even Kooks would know if you were surfing alongside a Croc that food is abundant exiting tided exotic shore break.
With using our surf knowledge we can easily trace back surf history with Aboriginal -Asian Trade by default.
Reckon we can safely lock it in without stickers! It's a no brainer even without using our brains...
It's gonna happen every single time a wave breaks upon same shore or tides to up river surf trade hub.
Ya Island hopping surf raft pretty much invented itself... Simply 'timetable the moon' for Mass Migration!
Many exotic Chinese / Indian narcotic plants & utensils align original Pituri trade routes well into Oz.
Woven Palm cups to Goldie to SA Large Shells holding Hot water...just order what ya want & sell yer Brew/Herbs
Brewed / Herbs / Vice / Pearls were always the lightest valuable Raft Cargo...no time era can alter that science!

Still today these Pacific Islands hub Global Vice of whatever peddling raft...prisons are overcrowded.
Women were not permitted on route unless they were being traded...
Mobs ruled of Village Storage Hubs designed & built to store Vice along the Route...(Notably Vice)
Now ya know why they needed Mobs to defend or protect stash & did form Trade Pacts just as today!
Routes are said to extend to 5,000 years trading...much & many maps to Alice Springs & on...
Much of the Trade is governed by seasonality of Rains / Droughts as to Drug Potency/Worth
...hence the need for Storage Hubs run by Ruthless Mob Cartels just as today!

Tidal Bore Trade Surfing Technique/s
As tidal wave approaches river mouth it rises, speeds & narrows resulting in SUP action to hold wave.
Pause : At this point...( Note Aborigines have slip raft )
It is feasible to split from Parent Raft to smaller single surf craft with trailer to keep with the wave...
This craft might better resemble surf craft as we know it...

The jettisoned lesser precious > bulk raft stock can be detoured to inlet or brought up river with time as a pontoon.
We call this birling...one hits their oar to split raft into 2/3/4 loads & surfs desired payload with the Wave.
This is a highly feasible natural skillful surf action to keep surfing the wave...(Check links)

Any wipeout & yer croc food...gotta walk the raft real good to surf the wave up river.

Top End Aborigines traded afar by surfing tides timetabled by the Moon .

tbb further shares Ancient Tidal Bore Surfing Trade
https://www.swellnet.com/news/the-depth-test/2019/08/08/review-children-...

3rd March 2023 tbb intros / explains the skill of Intercontinental Tidal Surfing
https://www.swellnet.com/news/reels/2023/02/27/watch-the-physics-noseriding

Also share / explore 1100's Global Surf Industry Trade Routes to Surf Town Munich.
https://www.swellnet.com/comment/904859
Crew can relive that Surf Trade era with Tourist Style River Surfing Tours as Japan.

Gold Coast were planning a Chinese Song Era River Surfing Theme Park at Nerang Train Station.
Closely resembled original 1829 Tweed / Goldie Convict Surfcraft > export Trade to UK.

( 1100's Early Global Surf Empire )
Not saying the First or 2nd Wave See Greece - Mid East > Maybe 1100's as the 3rd wave?
But well established long before final newest Wave of Modern recreational Polynesian Surfing!

What's interesting is earliest intercontinental Trade Ports were serviced by Tidal Craft
Then came the Trade Wind "Polynesians accessing deeper less tidal Central Island Bays.
Followed by Big States with Billowing Sail Craft trading into Deeper Southern & Northern Ports.
With opening of Continental Canals this gauges central Ports servicing Great Circle Equatorial Current.
Estuarine ports are mass dredged to Panama's Gauge & now double the effect of Man-made climate Tides.
There are examples of Hybrid Wind assisted Craft that may shift trade routes & Ports once again...

For sure...follow these original Tidal Surfers Trade Routes & Ports to uncover earlier Surf Nations!
Here's an example of an Earlier Surf Route or supposed earlier epic Surf Craft voyage.

Tasmanian Ocean Reed Canoes
https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0004/556456/MA60664799-Schout...

To South America Chilean Reed Canoes (Exact Same thing...but how?)
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/2b/2c/37/2b2c37dbebbcfe737c85dad178644f84--lak...

This was deemed the most likely Island hopping route...for Aboriginal voyage to South America.
Perfectly explains how early expert Oz surfcraft gets exported to South America...(Any other ideas?)
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Ancient_American_aff...

If crew wanna further explore where these Tassie > Chile Reed Canoes originated ...
tbb was curious as to why SA First Nation pioneered Reed Surfing culture.
It was recently revealed that first nation lived during the Inland sea period...
Crew can actually trace reed canoes / Floating Reed Mat Island chains to upper SA.
Where once a massive Thriving Surf Coast Culture existed > Now an inland sea > Desert.

southernraw wrote:

indo-dreaming wrote:

Okay SR we have been agreeing too much of late, and we need a break from that USA thread.

IMHO it seems like a bit of a straw clutching article.

I dont see any evidence whatsoever in that article for the intro claim.

"that first Australians were making huge overseas voyages"

There is evidence Indonesians/Makasar people came here and traded for sea cucumber, there is even cave paintings of their boats.

But If FNP had that same open ocean sea going ability and were doing the same thing, they would have highly likely recorded what they had seen elsewhere when they returned and brought back ideas they had seen that we would see groups in say the north area take on different ideas with clear influence from the places they visited, they also would likely have brought back seeds of plants useful which would result in seeing non native plants in the areas that these boats departed from.

We would see obvious influence's from the people of closest areas of Sumba, Rote, East Timor, likely through adoption or influence of their designs and motifs in cave art etc

And the idea there is no boats because they are made of wood is silly, when white fella come they would have recorded seeing these large sea going boats, " ocean-going double outrigger canoes up to 20 metres long" (with sails) once they started going elsewhere they wouldn't stop they would continue and expand on the journeys and boats.

No doubt FNP in the far Cape York area had interaction with Torres's straight and PNG people, the distance between island's there isn't great, large canoes that FNP had could easily do those distances even paddling (you should see the distances between islands they do in tiny canoes in Indo) and you would expect in most cases islands could be seen in the distance to travel too, thats very realistic, but traveling hundreds of Kilometres towards nothing but open blue water making it and returning is not, even if they made the journey one way returning is another thing.

BTW. There could have been belief's/stories/mythology of what was out there that prevented any motivation to see and anyone that tried and didn't return would confirm these beliefs.

A quick google shows Lapita pottery is found in PNG as is other pottery, so obviously it came here the same way it got there or came here via PNG.

It's surprising that FNP really never had pottery, but then again being nomadic you dont want to be carting around heavy clay pots and there wasn't any domesticated animal's to help move these items.

Indo, agreed, much prefer this trench warfare than the niceties with you.
Having said that, i read your post, and i can't confirm nor deny anything you post, i simply don't know.
I do know this is an extremely remote part of Australia. Can't imagine cook and his band of merry followers got around these parts too much in early settlement.
Is there recorded evidence? Maybe there was. Maybe it hasn't been found. Maybe it deteriorated. Story? don't know. Good points you raise but it seems alot more well researched than both you and i have done, but i'll look into it some more over the next few weeks/months and try to learn more. Not trying to disprove what you say. If it is true, i think it's fascinating, and based on the story and discussion from AW above etc, it seems to hold some legitimate truths. But yeah, fair to point out a lack of evidence, because, like i said, i don't know and i didn't actually fact check it so my bad i guess.
Will get back to this at some point.

Southernraw. Hi pal, hope you’re getting wet.

Many years ago I read an outstanding book written by Andrew McMillan.

‘An Intruder’s Guide to East Arnhem Land’

Well worth a read to understand the gamete of different visitors that reacted, traded , befriended, opposed and also ripped off aboriginal people.
The Trepang trade was enormous, a big economy in those times, sea faring vessels travelled in fleets at times, taking the sea cucumbers back to Indo. AW

An Intruder's Guide to East Arnhem Land : What Happened to Aborigines After Europeans Came to the Territory - Andrew McMillan

Wonderful part of thread on the ancient trade routes. They may yet find ships. Oldest found preserved so far are around 3500-4000 years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition

It can be done.

Unreal. Thanks for all the reading and links crew.
Much appreciated and look forward to checking them out.

southernraw wrote:

Australia is more racist than even i gave it credit for. And i really thought it was racist already.
Shiver me timber.

Was that the beers talking last night or you honestly think that?

AlfredWallace wrote:

southernraw wrote:

indo-dreaming wrote:

Okay SR we have been agreeing too much of late, and we need a break from that USA thread.

IMHO it seems like a bit of a straw clutching article.

I dont see any evidence whatsoever in that article for the intro claim.

"that first Australians were making huge overseas voyages"

There is evidence Indonesians/Makasar people came here and traded for sea cucumber, there is even cave paintings of their boats.

But If FNP had that same open ocean sea going ability and were doing the same thing, they would have highly likely recorded what they had seen elsewhere when they returned and brought back ideas they had seen that we would see groups in say the north area take on different ideas with clear influence from the places they visited, they also would likely have brought back seeds of plants useful which would result in seeing non native plants in the areas that these boats departed from.

We would see obvious influence's from the people of closest areas of Sumba, Rote, East Timor, likely through adoption or influence of their designs and motifs in cave art etc

And the idea there is no boats because they are made of wood is silly, when white fella come they would have recorded seeing these large sea going boats, " ocean-going double outrigger canoes up to 20 metres long" (with sails) once they started going elsewhere they wouldn't stop they would continue and expand on the journeys and boats.

No doubt FNP in the far Cape York area had interaction with Torres's straight and PNG people, the distance between island's there isn't great, large canoes that FNP had could easily do those distances even paddling (you should see the distances between islands they do in tiny canoes in Indo) and you would expect in most cases islands could be seen in the distance to travel too, thats very realistic, but traveling hundreds of Kilometres towards nothing but open blue water making it and returning is not, even if they made the journey one way returning is another thing.

BTW. There could have been belief's/stories/mythology of what was out there that prevented any motivation to see and anyone that tried and didn't return would confirm these beliefs.

A quick google shows Lapita pottery is found in PNG as is other pottery, so obviously it came here the same way it got there or came here via PNG.

It's surprising that FNP really never had pottery, but then again being nomadic you dont want to be carting around heavy clay pots and there wasn't any domesticated animal's to help move these items.

Indo, agreed, much prefer this trench warfare than the niceties with you.
Having said that, i read your post, and i can't confirm nor deny anything you post, i simply don't know.
I do know this is an extremely remote part of Australia. Can't imagine cook and his band of merry followers got around these parts too much in early settlement.
Is there recorded evidence? Maybe there was. Maybe it hasn't been found. Maybe it deteriorated. Story? don't know. Good points you raise but it seems alot more well researched than both you and i have done, but i'll look into it some more over the next few weeks/months and try to learn more. Not trying to disprove what you say. If it is true, i think it's fascinating, and based on the story and discussion from AW above etc, it seems to hold some legitimate truths. But yeah, fair to point out a lack of evidence, because, like i said, i don't know and i didn't actually fact check it so my bad i guess.
Will get back to this at some point.

Southernraw. Hi pal, hope you’re getting wet.

Many years ago I read an outstanding book written by Andrew McMillan.

‘An Intruder’s Guide to East Arnhem Land’

Well worth a read to understand the gamete of different visitors that reacted, traded , befriended, opposed and also ripped off aboriginal people.
The Trepang trade was enormous, a big economy in those times, sea faring vessels travelled in fleets at times, taking the sea cucumbers back to Indo. AW

An Intruder's Guide to East Arnhem Land : What Happened to Aborigines After Europeans Came to the Territory - Andrew McMillan

Edit. Appalling grammar by yours truly, should read gamut, not gamete(a sex cell)

goofyfoot wrote:

southernraw wrote:

Australia is more racist than even i gave it credit for. And i really thought it was racist already.
Shiver me timber.

Was that the beers talking last night or you honestly think that?

Hi Goofy. Nah the real deal. Ive been dealing w some really dumb racist shit lately....yesterday was a doozy. Was just venting. A long long way to go in this country when look at my friends and associates. Hope ur well mate.

southernraw wrote:

goofyfoot wrote:

southernraw wrote:

Australia is more racist than even i gave it credit for. And i really thought it was racist already.
Shiver me timber.

Was that the beers talking last night or you honestly think that?

Hi Goofy. Nah the real deal. Ive been dealing w some really dumb racist shit lately....yesterday was a doozy. Was just venting. A long long way to go in this country when look at my friends and associates. Hope ur well mate.

Fair enough sr, you’re speaking from first hand experience. That’s a shame you’re experiencing that.

@Southern,
Bit off the early traders topic but while we are loading you up with references.
.
Don't know if you are familiar with the story of James Morrill and his work "Sketch of a Residence Among the Aboriginals of Northern Queensland for Seventeen Years". (being a narrative of my life, shipwreck, landing, on the coast, residence among the Aboriginals, with an account of their manners and customs, and more of living; together with notices of many of the natural productions, and of the nature of the country) (1863).

https://townsville.spydus.com/tsvhistoryonline/C7012394059.pdf

If you've never read it I think you would find it a great read as I did when I discovered it.
It's regarded as one of Australia's most important national treasures. A seminal work.
Morrill was the only (ultimately) survivor of a shipwreck off Minerva Reef taken in half starved to death by the local Aboriginal tribes and lived with them for 17 years.
He didn't keep a diary, but wrote this account, three short chapters, with chapter 2 being the most interesting, sometimes funny, but ultimately sad when he finally makes contact with white settlers and leaves. It's an interesting perspective of the lives, thoughts and fears of FNP when first contact was happening, in the words of a man that was with them.
Chapter three he makes some more general remarks and observations, some fascinating, some that would probably upset a few today, but they are there and so was he, and that was how he saw things at the time. See what you think if you read it.
You can probably skip to page 4 chapter II to skip his early life if TL.

I was always aware of William Buckley and Pelletiere as Europeans who lived extensively with original traditional FNP but stumbled on Morrill's account by accident years ago and it made a big impression on me.
Hope you get a chance to have a read if you never have. I know you have a keen interest in these things.

keep on rockin'@Southern.

Hey @adam12, always so good and refreshing to hear from you! Shit yeah i hadnt heard of it but I'll check it out on your recommendation!!! 100%. Thanks so much!
Im also on the hunt for a copy of a book called "Some people want to Shoot Me" by Madeleine Dickie. An amazing writer with lived experience and a lovely human too. Ive heard its a cracking read based on real events.
Thanks legend and hope you're well
And also good onya @goofyfoot and cheers. Yeah just a bit of a flare up. Lets blame the planets again cos reading this thread today has been wholesome and fullfilling to read each and alls input. Theres alot of good humans out there so cheers to u all for restoring the faith.

adam12 wrote:

@Southern,
Bit off the early traders topic but while we are loading you up with references.
.
Don't know if you are familiar with the story of James Morrill and his work "Sketch of a Residence Among the Aboriginals of Northern Queensland for Seventeen Years". (being a narrative of my life, shipwreck, landing, on the coast, residence among the Aboriginals, with an account of their manners and customs, and more of living; together with notices of many of the natural productions, and of the nature of the country) (1863).

https://townsville.spydus.com/tsvhistoryonline/C7012394059.pdf

If you've never read it I think you would find it a great read as I did when I discovered it.
It's regarded as one of Australia's most important national treasures. A seminal work.
Morrill was the only (ultimately) survivor of a shipwreck off Minerva Reef taken in half starved to death by the local Aboriginal tribes and lived with them for 17 years.
He didn't keep a diary, but wrote this account, three short chapters, with chapter 2 being the most interesting, sometimes funny, but ultimately sad when he finally makes contact with white settlers and leaves. It's an interesting perspective of the lives, thoughts and fears of FNP when first contact was happening, in the words of a man that was with them.
Chapter three he makes some more general remarks and observations, some fascinating, some that would probably upset a few today, but they are there and so was he, and that was how he saw things at the time. See what you think if you read it.
You can probably skip to page 4 chapter II to skip his early life if TL.

I was always aware of William Buckley and Pelletiere as Europeans who lived extensively with original traditional FNP but stumbled on Morrill's account by accident years ago and it made a big impression on me.
Hope you get a chance to have a read if you never have. I know you have a keen interest in these things.

keep on rockin'@Southern.

Adam12 & Southernraw and the rest of us fine folks.

Out of interest, ‘The Life and Adventures of William Buckley’ by John Morgan.
A good read typically local to Geelong, Point Impossible and the Bellarine Peninsula in. Victoria.
In the 90’s I was the construction manager (voluntary) for Surfrider Foundation, loads of great undertakings, in particular the protection of sensitive sites at Point Impossible.
Long story short, another landscape mate of mine, his crew of guys coupled with my crew, worked there for 16 days in the month of June after successfully winning a tender application for works to construct the present stone steps down to the beach, alter the fencing and revegetation works.
We built the still intact good stone steps, some later iterations by others for more stone steps towards Thompson Creek are complete shit.

This car park area was occupied by Wada Wurrung people back in the day.
The restorative works were about protecting very sensitive sites ( I can’t reveal the details), changing the car parking area to what it is today because for decades us surfers had been parking on a huge midden.
Fish/eel traps were also present etc.
Myself in particular felt a real ‘sense of place’ whilst working, all the while knowing the history of earlier occupation and that William Buckley lived within that group of people for quite sometime, even learning their language.
I won’t spoil the book, it’s sad, brutal at times and also joyful.
After reading the book, you’ll definitely have a different thought process going through your mind when you next visit.
Tracks Magazine made a surprise visit one day whilst working, they titled their story ‘One Step at A Time’, very pertinent to the locations past and to the work we we were doing. Comically, they stated, it looked like more surfing was being undertaken than stonework on some days.
We were lucky, had a couple of good swells whilst there. AW

Hi AW. Thats epic, and thanks for sharing that.
Like many on Swellnet, i feel i have a pretty strong energetic connection to that part of the world, and really welcome learning more about times of yore, and what the place really is about. There's some powerful energy in that part of the world, particlarly the Bells/Jarrasite all the way to Addis, and also the Otway to Peterborough zone. Very powerful energy, not just in the ocean. Makes you wonder hey. Also a fair bit of energy around the Kardinia park region eh ;-)
Would hope to cross paths with the great AW and @a12 and many others here at some point in the future. Alot of shared stories and wisdom passed on no doubt.
I wish i had something of significance to add to the convo at this point, but not right now. Just wanna say cheers and loving these recommendations.

southernraw wrote:

Hi AW. Thats epic, and thanks for sharing that.
Like many on Swellnet, i feel i have a pretty strong energetic connection to that part of the world, and really welcome learning more about times of yore, and what the place really is about. There's some powerful energy in that part of the world, particlarly the Bells/Jarrasite all the way to Addis, and also the Otway to Peterborough zone. Very powerful energy, not just in the ocean. Makes you wonder hey. Also a fair bit of energy around the Kardinia park region eh ;-)
Would hope to cross paths with the great AW and @a12 and many others here at some point in the future. Alot of shared stories and wisdom passed on no doubt.
I wish i had something of significance to add to the convo at this point, but not right now. Just wanna say cheers and loving these recommendations.

Southernraw. Good on ya mate.
I admire your never deviating and enduring passion for Australia’s original inhabitants.
The more I read and the more I learn about them, the more enriched I feel.

There’s a plethora of material out there to read, Adam12 mentioned one I’d not previously heard of, so I will track it down and learn something new. All the best .AW