tickleandrose
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I have another perspective, from pandemic point of view.
https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/publications/research-papers/download/36-research-papers/13957-epidemics-and-pandemics-in-victoria-historical-perspectives
Smallpox and Indigenous population decline
Prior to European settlement, the Kulin people of what came to be known as the Port Phillip region suffered little communicable disease. The Kulin lived in low numbers and without domesticated animals, conditions not conducive to the spread of infectious diseases. Paleopathologists have shown that indigenous peoples living in other parts of Victoria, such as the Murray region, did suffer diarrhoeal diseases resulting from their near-sedentary way of life in a food-rich environment.[footnote 9]
Smallpox is generally accepted as the earliest-known epidemic episode in settler-Australian history, decimating Indigenous Australian populations in the south-eastern parts of the continent. There are continuing debates among historians as to whether smallpox was brought to Australia by the Europeans who settled at Port Jackson in 1788 or by Macassans (from South Sulawesi) with whom Aboriginal peoples in northern Australia had been trading since the mid-eighteenth century.[footnote 10] Most historians accept the former argument, although the conventional account is complicated by the fact that there were no cases of smallpox recorded on the First Fleet or among early settlers. For similar reasons, some historians have argued the disease was in fact chickenpox, which is more infectious than smallpox and severe (even fatal) when contracted by adults, perhaps explaining its easy transmission over less densely populated parts of the continent.[footnote 11]
Two major 'pox' epidemics, one in 1789 and another in 1829–31, severely impacted Australia's Indigenous population. The first recorded outbreak, in April 1789, swept through the Sydney area, and may have reached as far south as the Port Phillip region.[footnote 12] A second outbreak spread along the Murray-Darling Basin from 1829, into eastern Australia reaching the south coast of what would later become Victoria. Records suggest the outbreak was 'universal' in 1830 and 1831 in the country west of Port Phillip, from the Murray River to the south coast. There is less evidence of the outbreak reaching Gippsland. Historian Judy Campbell estimates that the incidence of disease in the dwellings of closely related clans in semi-settled and well-endowed districts, from Portland across to Westernport, would have been high and would have seen severe mortalities rates.[footnote 13]
The two epidemics are estimated to have killed as many as three-quarters of Victoria's pre-colonial population. It is now thought that the Aboriginal population of Victoria was about 60,000 prior to 1788, which the epidemics halved twice, to a population of about 15,000. The Djadja Wurrung people living in the basins of the Loddon and Avoca rivers, for example, was probably halved from 4,000 to less than 2,000 by 1840.[footnote 14]
These losses were compounded by other diseases introduced from Europe. From the early nineteenth century, European whalers and sealers introduced venereal diseases, which not only killed people but rendered Aboriginal women sterile and infected babies, severely diminishing the possibility of an Aboriginal demographic recovery. As Attwood puts it, 'white men's lust killed many more Aboriginal people than did their guns'.[footnote 15] As settlement spread, a further fall occurred as Indigenous peoples came into increasing contact with Europeans. Colds, bronchitis, influenza, measles, scarlet fever, dysentery and tuberculosis—which can kill up to 50 per cent of those who become infected with the active bacteria—spread through Indigenous populations that had little if any immunity to these illnesses.[footnote 16]
Furthermore, as Hunter and Carmody note, the negative effect of these multiple epidemics is likely to have been compounded by declining nutrition associated with the colonial expansion onto lands that had provided their food source.[footnote 17]
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