Absolutely fantastic. Still highly informative reading on the great variety, strengths, and intricacies of Indigenous Australian culture before white people came. In the 2020s, we live in an era of a) reactionary right-wing types, who still reiterate the pallid, naive ideas, which Blainey disproved almost five decades ago, in which the existence of Australia's many Indigenous nations were static, often desperate, and lacking in complexity, and b) ideological left-wing types who - not unreasonably or unsympathetically - seek out narratives of power and woe in their fight against lingering discrimination and the rose-tinted view of the past which successive governments seem desperate to write into the history books, but who aren't so interested in using science or reason to hammer things out. Instead, by using those very tools, Blainey examines the many ways in which nomadic life was equal - or superior - to that of Europeans and Asians, as well as exploring the versatility, developments, and depth of life on the continent prior to 1788. It is a nuanced portrayal that, of course, lacks something for being old now, but - adjusted for inflation, as it were - is richly rewarding. There were several times that I was able to reposition my mind, on items I had been pondering for some time. (For example, as Blainey discusses in the final chapter, the possibility that one of the reasons why farming and domestication didn't make it across from some of the islands of New Guinea and the Torres Strait - almost within sight of Australia and within trading networks for northern Indigenous people - was to do with their inconsistency with nomadic life. Soil in the areas which regularly traded - those in the north - was not welcoming to farming; the most popular domesticated animal (the pig) would be an encumbrance on even a partly-nomadic life; it did not reflect in the cultural and religious values which also tied northern Australians to their central and southern brethren; and in fact Indigenous people often made a better life being nomadic: it was - in good times - fewer hours' work than domesticated life and was strengthened by the movement throughout the seasons which of course isn't possible on a smaller island. Additionally, the islands of New Guinea provided fewer but more abundant foodstuffs in smaller locations, supporting the additional growth of, say, taro. Domestication made sense when it arrived. By contrast, even with some pigs or some sweet potatoes, Indigenous tribes would still have needed to traverse a wider area of land for the incredibly wide but less populous range of items that made up their diet, and thus it would have been an active liability. The more you know.)

Pivotal reading for anyone interested in Australian history. ( )

Heavy-going, somewhat interesting. Can't read more than a few pages at a time. I expect it will take most of 2010 to finish it.