agriculture or hunter-gathering?

After reading more articles than I originally anticipated, it appears that most First Nations Australians were hunter-gatherers at the time of invasion.

This isn’t to say that they weren’t impacting the landscape. They were intelligent users of fire, using it to create mosaics of burnt and unburnt areas to attract game and encourage new growth in a manner that we now call ‘firestick farming’.

Burning was undertaken at specific times of the year once annual plants had finished their life cycle and set seed, so that the future population existed in the seed bank. Recently burnt areas promoted the growth of annual grasses and tubers such as yams, drawing kangaroos and emus which could be hunted. These tubers and grasses were also harvested and eaten by First Nations Australians. Sometimes this resulted in a surplus harvest which was preserved and stored.

First Nations Australians also altered the Australian landscapes by constructing wells, dams, and housing. Just because they may not have managed large-scale agricultural systems doesn’t mean that First Nations Australians were less advanced than their invaders. In many senses, their sustainable maintenance of our Australian ecosystems implies that they were much more advanced than Europeans.