#explorationofaustralia

Exploration of Australia

Several European explorers sailed the coast of Australia, then known as New Holland, in the 17th century. However, it wasn’t until 1770 that Captain James Cook chartered the east coast and claimed it for Britain. The new outpost was put to use as a penal colony and on 26 January 1788, the First Fleet of 11 ships carrying 1,500 people – half of them convicts – arrived in Sydney Harbour. Until penal transportation ended in 1868, 160,000 men and women came to Australia as convicts. The aborigine people had never seen white people until Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay in They were shocked to see these white people in their strange clothes and they thought they were the spirits of their dead ancestors. At first the Aborigines were friendly towards the visitors but as they were taking more and more of their land and destroying the trees and wild life they began to fight back. White men brought diseases like smallpox and in two years smallpox had killed almost half the aborigine people around Sydney. Aborigines were second class people in their own land. They only got the right to vote in

Bush food and Bush Tucker / Native Australian Foods

Food from animals including kangaroo, emus, wild turkey, rock wallaby, possums, snakes and lizards and anteaters. Food from plants including wild orange, wild passion fruit, wild fig, bush tomato, mistletoe, bush banana and bush coconut, pencil yams, mulgara apple, bush plums and sultanas. Edible seeds including mulgara seeds and wattle seeds. Grubs and insects – witchetty grub Honey and nectars found in the honey ant, honey from the native bee, nectar from the flowers of the bloodwood and corkwood trees. Water - the search for water in the dry desert conditions was essential for survival. Water could be tree roots and hollows. Seed grinding patches are areas of rock worn smooth by Aboriginal women grinding seeds. The women removed the husks, then placed the seeds (eg. acacia, grass, kurrajong and wattle) between a large flat rock and a smaller round rock. The seeds were then ground into flour, which was mixed with water to form a dough. The dough was then kneaded and cooked to make a type of damper, which was an essential part of the Aboriginal diet. (soda bread) Fish traps are rocks placed side by side to form a circle in water. When the tide is high, fish swim into these pools, but are trapped when the tide lowers. Aboriginal people would then came along and remove the caught fish. Fish traps are found on the Australian coast in tidal areas, as well as along inland creeks and rivers.

Australian Foods as Local Plants and Insects A wide range of plants and animals were eaten, and insect foods included certain ants, grubs and beetles, while streams provided fish and eels. Wood cockroach called kalabaj by the Aborigines, who eat it by gently crushing the shell in their teeth and then sucking out its insides The Ornate Burrowing Frog from the rainforest is eaten. kangaroo and wallaby, possum and wombat, mutton-bird and penguins (both the flesh and the eggs) and various molluscs and Australian Foods as Fruits and Vegetables Their plant menu included fruits such as the cherry, currant and kangaroo apple, and vegetables. Sugar bag is honey made by Australian native stingless bees which has its own special flavour. Stingless bees store honey (and pollen) in their nests as food sources when times are tough. Sugar bag was a highly prized food of Aborigines who hunted it from wild nests; it’s real bush tucker. The contents include honey, wax, yellow pollen balls and dead bees. Honey was seen as a much-prized bush food and is often given as gifts. Honey Ants Honey Ants from nests found under Mulga Trees. The nest may extend as much as a metre or two deep into the ground and so it takes of lot of digging to get a handful of ants! The ants gather nectar from insects and then store the honey in their stomachs. That was the most important sugar resource in Australian foods.