Traces of the natives appeared at every step, sometimes in their hunting-huts, which consist of nothing more than a large piece of bark, bent in the middle, and open at both ends, exactly resembling two cards, set up to form an acute angle.
When prevented by tempestuous weather, or any other cause, from fishing, these people suffer severely. They have then no resource, but to pick up shell-fish, which may happen to cling to the rocks, and be cast on the beach; to hunt particular reptiles and small animals, which are scarce; to dig fern root in the swamps; or to gather a few berries, destitute of flavour and nutrition, which the woods afford. To alleviate the sensation of hunger, they tie a ligature tightly around the belly, as I have often seen our soldiers do from the same cause.
Let us, however, suppose them successful in procuring fish. The wife returns to land with her booty, and the husband quitting the rock joins his stock to hers; and they repair either to some neighbouring cavern, or to their hut. This last is composed of pieces of bark, very rudely piled together, in shape as like a soldier's tent as any known image to which I can compare it: too low to admit the lord of it to stand upright; but long and wide enough to admit three or four persons to lie under it. “Here shelters himself a being, born with all those powers which education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines.” With a lighted stick brought from the canoe, they now kindle a small fire, at the mouth of the hut, and prepare to dress their meal. They begin by throwing the fish, exactly in the state in which it came from the water, on the fire. When it has become a little warmed they take it off, rub away the scales, and then peal off with their teeth the surface, which they find done, and eat. Now, and not before, they gut it; but if the fish be a mullet, or any other which has a fatty substance about the intestines, they carefully guard that part, and esteem it a delicacy. The cooking is now completed, by the remaining part being laid on the fire until it be sufficiently done. A bird, a lizard, a rat, or any other animal, they treat in the same manner: the feathers of the one, and the fur of the other, they thus get rid of.
Two of them once stole twelve pounds of rice, and carried it off. They knew how we cooked it; and by way of putting it in practice, they spread the rice on the ground, before a fire, and as it grew hot continued to throw water on it. Their ingenuity was however very ill rewarded; for the rice became so mingled with the dirt and sand on which it was laid, that even they could not eat it; and the whole was spoiled.
http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00044.pdf 1788 - the encounter between people who recently invented the steam engine and people who couldn't even boil water (but apparently had sophisticated buildings and agriculture...)
1788 the first settlement of NSW around Sydney Harbour. Sydney Harbour is a food "desert" apparently, with little nutritionally growing there before the arrival of the White Settlers. Australia is a vast continent, with many different climatic zones and settlement patterns. Why, Soren, do you and all the Racists assume what was happening in and around Sydney was also happening in say, Victoria or Western Australia or Tasmania or Queensland? Mmmm? Tell us, were the same things happening London as were occurring in say Poland or Russia or Greece? Mmmm?
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