May 122020
Over untold millennia, Aboriginal people developed knowledge systems that allowed them to live in sustainable harmony with the land. Despite being regarded by Europeans as ‘simple, primitive, pagan and nomadic‘, it was a society free of poverty, hunger, pestilence and war, with the highest common standard of living in the world.
Read Jim Poulter’s article entitled farms without fences (pdf), which discusses the nature of Aboriginal environmental management and how Aboriginal ‘permaculture farming’ was largely invisible to European eyes. The sections in the article are:
- Just how long have Aboriginal people been here?
- All Aboriginal knowledge served ecological purposes.
- What the early explorers saw.
- A managed environment.
- Songlines are everywhere.
- A Red River Gum guards your journey.
- Significant sites in the Middle Yarra.