Australia’s original people had been dealt a lean ecological hand — no domesticatable fauna beyond the dingo, no domesticatable flora beyond the macadamia nut — so they developed a form of firestick farming and expertise in exploiting even the most ephemeral seasonal resources. They also developed steepling thought-structures — intellectual edifices so comprehensive that every creature and plant had its place within it. They travelled light, but they were walking atlases, and walking encyclopedias of natural history. They were Scheherazades, too, because this complicated knowledge was not written down but allocated between human minds in song, dance and story. Detailed observations of nature were elevated into drama by the development … Continue reading Inga Clendinnen