The Aborigine

Try to imagine life

50,000 years ago

Inhabited by indigenous  native tribes

Long before the world we now know

Aborigines it seems migrated from South Asia

From New Guinea across the Timor Sea

Looking for a new land to settle and live

In Australia’s Northern Territory

Tjapukai was a tribe of short built Aborigines

Who settled in  Cairns and the area around

They lived in the grasslands and Forests

And fed on food from the ground

The ladies collected lizards and insects

Dug for yams and picked various berries too

The men hunted birds , possums and snakes

And would spear Emus and maybe a large Kangaroo

The men used various hunting methods

They were excellent at tracking  or stalking

Keeping their presence from the prey at all times

From downwind disguised in mud crawling not walking

At fishing they were also quite clever

Hands ,  nets   ,  traps  and lines would they use

Even Turtle and large fish were caught

By harpoons launched from canoes

They knew the locations of the water holes

Their sense of direction was really acute

At times they saved the morning dew

Or even drained water from certain plants at the root

When Captain Cook claimed the East Coast for the U K

Naming it New South Wales at that time

Colonisation was not far away

Another  eight  years maybe  nine

The settlement of Europeans as farmers

With a need for land for agriculture or to graze

Meant moving the native residents off their homeland

On the pretext that they were nomads who could wander their ways

But alas with the settlers came diseases never known

There was Chicken pox, Small pox, Measles & Flu

Decimating the area with fatalities

Both Europeans and Aborigine tribesmen too

In Tasmania the Palawah were seriously depleted

By diseases and the Black War it is said

But  the remainder of tribe that survived

Now live on the islands of Bass Strait instead

On the mainland there was also problems

With the massacres of Aborigines who resisted

Their land being taken by settlers

The exact numbers of casualties was never listed

Aborigine number declined to less than 100,000

In the 20 century so it’s said

And in 1914 800 Aborigines joined the Army

By the government they were then clothed and fed

By 1930 their number began to rise

As their resistance to disease once again grew

And by 1940 with the advent of Penicillin

Sickness waned and the birthrate  rose too

In the present day there are more than 600,000

And they have the right to an electoral vote as well

In 1984 The PIntupi tribe were contacted

And brought into a settlement to dwell

I suppose the question must be If the Aborigines  were asked

What they truly considered as home

Would they opt for the houses to live in

Or would the Bush they prefer to constantly roam

Dennis Shrubshall  29th February 2016