The Bagundji of the darling basin: Cereal gatherers in an uncertain environment

History came late to Lethbridge Pocket, on Mt. Moffatt's northern boundary, just over the crest of the Great Dividing Range, source of the extensive Maranoa, Warrego and Fitzroy river systems. Explorer Major Thomas Mitchell skirted the area to the westward in 1846, observing (Mitchell, 1848, 208) that the prospect towards the dominating, massive table-lands ‘was very grand’; the name of Dean Buckland, geologist and antiquarian, was bestowed upon the loftiest table-land, at the foot of which Lethbridge Pocket lay concealed. Ludwig Leichhardt had passed to the north-east, a year previously, but he too preferred to avoid the rugged mountains, now termed the Carnarvon and Chesterton Ranges. Both the journals of Mitchell and Leichhardt testify, on many pages, to the abundant material traces of a populous aboriginal community in the region. Leichhardt commented (1847, 45) that ‘appearances indicated that the commencement of the (Carnarvon) ranges was a favourite resort of the “blackfellows”. The remains of recent repasts of mussels were strewed about the larger water-holes’.

In recent years research has been directed to looking for the origins of agriculture and to finding the causes of the transition from hunting and gathering to food production and the domestication of plants and animals. From these studies it has become apparent first, that the transition occurred several times and in several places in prehistory; secondly, that the mechanisms underlying the transition are quite complex; and thirdly that the transition occurred in some regions but not in others, in spite of the prevalence of similar environmental conditions and patterns of exploitation.