On 8 April, Judy Ritchie wrote:
> Visting in Australia just a few years ago > ....  But the extreme sun is
probably fine for the native aborigines (as
> long as they stay on their cultural diet), but is very hard on the fair
> skinned, fair haired and freckled from the British Isles

Judy,
    I'd like to know what you mean by "their cultural diet"?  Australian Aboriginal people living traditional lives in widely different areas always enjoyed distinctly different diets.  On Hinchinbrook Island and other coastal areas, the local people enjoyed an extremely rich and plentiful diet based round the sea - fish with fins and scales, shellfish, as found in the middens (rubbish heaps) in these areas, and local fruits in season, roots of plants, nuts and small, nourishing animals.  On Hinchinbrook Island the ancient stone fish traps, going a long way out into the sea to allow for very low seasonal tides, probably date back thousands, rather than hundreds, of years and were maintained regularly over that time.  (The oldest human-made structure I've ever seen.)  They could feed a large number of people.  The stone walls of the fish traps also grew shellfish.  In many areas, European settlers destroyed similar fish traps, a valuable source of food, or removed the people who used and maintained them.
    Aboriginal people in S-E Queensland used to travel long distances to come together for the annual bunya festival, when the bunya nuts ripened. Round Townsville in the north, there were  inter-tribal gatherings at frequent intervals, and plenty of bush food to feast on.  Away from the coast, freshwater fish and eels were caught (the eels were smoked by the Djirrbal people of north Queensland) and some vegetable foods were processed to leach out toxic substances, e.g. the black bean.  I understand there were some stone fish traps in river estuaries, too.
     Moving round the land according to the seasons when particular foods were available gave a variety of kinds of foods over the year, in drier areas where food was less abundant.  It is not generally realised just how much of a contribution the women made to the food supply (as early anthropologists were men).  Women used digging sticks to locate food of various types - edible roots, small animals such as little lizards, witchetty grubs - as 
well as harvesting plant products, in some regions including seeds suitable for making flour (depending on the region).  Bush honey (sugar bag) was a treat.  Several types of lily roots were harvested in northern Australia.  The advanced aerodynamics used in making boomerangs and woomera (spear-throwers) enabled larger animals such as kangaroos and emus (a large, flightless bird) on the plains to be hunted.  Only one type of boomerang was the returning type, for bringing down birds out of a flock of birds in flight. There were also well-established trade routes, for things such as tools and salt, and more.
    The ill-fated Anglo-Irish explorers Burke and Wills, on their 1860-1861 expedition, died of lack of food, in an arid area where up to 1,000 Aboriginal people were (to quote my anthropology lecturer a few years ago) "living in plenty".  The explorers were too proud to take advice from the local (Aboriginal) people on what to eat and how to process it.  They knew what was edible and where to find it according to the seasons.
    I'm not sure what Aboriginal people ate in cold parts of the continent, such as the Snowy Mountains and the Flinders Ranges, but I'm sure it was very different from the food of the coastal people of Queensland and New South Wales, from the north Queensland rainforest people such as the Djirrbal, from the people living on the coastal rivers, and from the various groups living on the plains, the savannah country and in the deserts. Getting food also meant regular healthy exercise.  Even the driest areas had good "bush tucker" (food), for those who knew how to look for it;  indeed, some years ago the army had an officer working on this and consulting with Aboriginal people, to provide information for survival in remote areas. Some bush foods are gradually appearing in restaurants, but at this stage very little.
     Sorry to digress, but the idea of "an Aboriginal diet" needed a response. To declare where I am coming from, I must humbly say I am not Aboriginal (I'm Anglo-Celtic), and not a white anthropologist.  I have worked with people from the two main indigenous groups in Australia, usually with an Aboriginal supervisor, and learnt some of my values there.  I would very much prefer if this post were written by an indigenous person with a wide knowledge of different areas of the country, because I can only ever be an outsider - like any Europeans working with other ethnic groups in education, health and anthropology.  I hope I shall remain a respectful outsider. 
    Many years ago, late-1960s, I gathered, from Aboriginal sources, information on weaning foods in several regions but unfortunately these files were lost in a move.
     I'm going nomail tonight, and so any responses to me privately, please, or copy them to me.
        Virginia

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