Desert people

The Aborigines

[ Aborigines surrounding a fire to keep warm ]

As we have looked into so many kinds of people who survive in the desert, the Australian Aborigines have lives closest to nature with a nomadic way of life. Almost all these people appear naked or just with plain blankets or cloaks, but surprisingly, relying on their instinctive nomadic abilities and skills for survival, they are the best adapted of all humans to life in the desert! Back to the year 1770, there were about 300,000 Aborigines in Australia, but now, the population has already decreased to 100,000 of them. All divided into different clans or tribes, with intermarraiges between some of the groups, but tribal fights also occured too. Lives of Aborigines are simple, this can be seen in their appearence as they possess little property as to make travelling convenient. Men usually carry the important weapons with them, for example: a variety of spears, a throwing stick and boomerangs. As for women, they bring with them a few stone and bone tools, hollowed-out bowls and baskets for food, also babies if necessary. Though the Aborigines are lagged behind a lot, don't think that they are entire barbarians, in fact, they have their own religion, art and culture. They have a religious mysticism, the 'dreaming' of mythical and actual beings and animals blended together, some were even out of the natural. These men sometimes also come together and have 'meetings' called corroborees, but these were just temporary, they don't camp together for long. A few of the people are hunter-gatherers, in this harsh situation, food- gathereing groups are more popular. There are also musician-storytellers whose stories are passed on orally. There are also people with well-developed techniques of cave-painting. As we can see, the Aborigines' lifestyle are still staying at the Stone Ages, as their weapons and tools, their culture are similar to the primitive times. These men had also been ommitted in the Australian population censuses 50 years ago, for the Australian government thought that the Aborigines metaphorically and literally had no civil rights.

[The Aborigine cave-painting of barramundi fish which has a mystic meaning behind.]