Aboriginal Prehistory Central Qld Area

2022-10-07T03:46:00.000-07:00

Mt Morgan Devonian/Lower Carboniferous

The sediments of the Dee river around the township showgrounds area to down Boulder creek road around Mt Victoria way and some conglomerate metamorphic mudstones of Boulder creek show medium to good varieties of fossils a lot are in metamorphic mudstone and some people like to dismiss them as fossil remanets , The Geological map shows certain areas as fossil bearing but not others which have a same faeces.

Crystal Bivalve has signs of ancient residual radiation, with hardness of 8-9 and specific gravity i=of 2.7 one can assume it is a type of beryl gemstone possibly Goshenite .

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Australia-Ancient-Past-Marcus-Knight-ebook/dp/B0793Q3LMJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524712007&sr=8-1&keywords=Australia%20An%20Ancient%20past&fbclid=IwAR3f2x-gF-XYZ_84phXpEKFrW4ISX3KJoV_hKO5_bi30iwiOmfSLgpMCguA

Winter Wattles

2022-10-07T03:41:00.002-07:00

AUSTRALIA AN Ancient Past, Marcus Knight #ebook #BookBoost

2016-01-24T20:40:00.001-08:00

My book delves into Geoscience and Evolution concentrating on species found central Qld from 500 million years Species to megafauna times of 40 million years to recent around Central Qld. Aboriginal tribal lifestyle and Cultural Ceremonies and the native foods and artifacts. The book has many highlighted word links to Museums to back up my evidence found at certain locations or Aboriginal tribal culture and Prehistory the time after white settlers arrive . Some concentration on the Ancient Tribal people of Central Qld as archeology expeditions bought exciting finds of Ancient Fossils and Artifacts. click on the Picture

About the Author

2015-05-29T19:36:00.004-07:00

Son of Cyril George Knight and Eileen Knight born in Bowen, Queensland, 1958 . Married to Helma Munasque Knight 2 years my younger a Woman from Mindanao Philippines for lots of years forever is never to be counted. Our children Helena-Marie and Marcus-James are out living and working earning and living their lives one can't be any more happy than that.

Photograph of us of my at my son's Seniors graduation, my Daughter Helena -Marie is far right. I seem to succeeded a lot better than some of the children and young adults of my teenage years that is much a positive. They were given a bring up without any indoctrination of any religion just love adventure and some fun. religion is their decision at the time when they are ever interested. I tried to take them on some journeys bush wise when they were growing up like I had but one has been disabled most of their lives so opportunities have been lost and some gained.
One felt the need to foster a love of the wilderness and nature in them with some journeys camping and bush looking at rocks and nature, journeys were of all importance. We did some good time fishing Port Alma and lots of trips to the beaches Yeppoon Emu park way Keppel sands they would swim while I fished the creek the other side and once a long trip around down to Quilpie opal fields, and some good camping trips out along the Fitzroy river. One has always been interested in exploring and questioning everything in nature with a love of rocks inherited from ones Grandfather and Father. And a collection in all things old from my Grandmother dedication to get things right and achieve something in life from my Mother a successful Nurse, Sister matron at the Bowen Hospital.

My mother when I was a child in primary school she did have to send me to Townsville once at age of five for a couple weeks to have a painful operation I remember waking up in the middle of doctors with scalpels in my left eye they had to tightened the muscles up to stop me walking into things all the time.But the first injection to put me to sleep didn't work so I got laughing gas and woke up while they were cutting my eye so more gas was given latter had the biggest headache for hours must have cried for hours alone in the recovery room from the experience .
The hospital stay after was such a sad time with lots of strangers that I didn't know was glad to see my mum wow what a dump and she had to pay for that at that time that was rather ridiculous.
My Mother gave me a strong heart and a sense of justice and compassion for others illness and misery in their lives.
When I was a teen we used to discuss lot of the really important issues that were happening in the World there was so much poverty in Africa and Vietnam war was going on.
Our house was then at a low part of town that used to flood a lot into a swamp across the road that had numerous creatures from massive brown snakes that chased my sister Claire and I, a horse that bit, lot of tortoises, some fish and eels we used to catch and eat. Due to poverty situation with my family having our house blown away not long after one was born which put my Parents in much debt building a new house with paying the Government Housing Commission back on a loan for rebuilding the second hose as the first got blown away after I was born my parents had to live with my grandparents it was one of the only few houses left standing My father told me they tied it down with ropes during the storm. The whole world was just one big play yard as far as one could walk, there very few toys as a child so one found interest and amusement in the smallest things in nature or creating sculptures out of scrap wire my grandfather collected.
The environment was hardly polluted or pillaged by people as many places my Father and Grandparents took us as children was still much pristine scrub lands near rocky beach area's.
My grandfather and father were very much rock collectors and show us children places where to find the best of gems and even some gold at time's. This fostered an environment for the collection of semi-precious gems mainly different types of agate's one was bored with sitting round a camp all day waiting for the tide to change or my Dad and Grandfather to return from their crabbing trips among the mangroves. My father was for a while an artist and did some nice paintings but he just put them in the up in this cupboard and we never got to see them he was much skilled in net making boat building could play nearly all music instruments would play a lot of guitar in the hotels in Bowen and never pay for a beer could sing really good also and later in life carved shells and cut gemstones. I might have got some of his art abilities could sing for a while as a child in School competitions but my voice broke early.

Recent picture of our house in Bowen when we owed it there was only roses across the front and mango tree's and lily pilly trees up the left side with bamboo at the back was only a small house for a family of six the patio had been turned into bedrooms but seem fine for us at the time. dad had a forge for making fishing spears and built boats in the back yard where we had a chook pen and a vege garden.
My Grandfather place was a journey in its own on weekends he had a gold stamper machine in the back yard and beside it was a forge and old shed with every sort of nut and bolt, steel items to keep his machine running, ah the paints!one had an awesome time. There were lot of paints for the boats that Grand Dad and my Father used to build some were enormous bond wood structures 14 feet long was an ordinary size, all these elements were available for us as children to play and create everything from small artworks to sculptures took the place of the need to have toys.

My grandfather and father with a tiger shark they caught when I went fishing with them down the Camp in the bush.
I used to have a old fold out type camera which I had been given to as a present out of my Grandmother's antique collection I remember doing a few sets of photos with it before the salt seized parts of it just wasn't meant for bush and ocean work. Books were an important part of passing time as one has never known Television around the house till one was in grade eight.
I was a big fan of Adventure books and had a small treasured collection of Gerald Durrell's books about his world and other animal's. There was always spare time when one with my Sisters or other children in the neighbourhood would go on Adventures sometimes around the Hills or the mangrove swamps and old rifle range in Bowen used to collect antique copper items and returnable bottles for spare cash.
Cash was an incentive so early in life one had a small vegetable garden from which one sold lettuce for 30c back then one need money to buy books. Books were an ideal escapism from the reality of people giving one the four eye's abuse must admit the glass's were ridiculous but not enough to throw rocks at.
On my way home from primary school I used to walk up over the hill the hospital was on to sometimes way a while to walk with my mother home from working as a Nurse, while waiting one was fascinated with the Hospital's glass dump of injection bottles and test tubes etc had created my own chemistry set with item and household chemicals. One used to see Chemistry sets sold in the shops getting one haircut was such a thing done with too much frequency in those day was ridiculous and the old hand worked shears the barber Mr Webster used were murder. It gave me the freedom to read magazine and Phantom comics for free and a chance to window shop the toy store microscopes and chemistry sets the main interest and knew one would never have the money to afford though I got a microscope when I was in grade 7 that was the most awesome gift ever then.
I used to keep records of my experiments and journeys, had maps drawn of the places journeyed but nothing was kept for very long it was always lost in the planning to move on to another adventure.
One was a big believer in other possible dimensions and different periods of time and History even at a young age most likely born from listening may late night Stories on the radio as television was not affordable in our house till I was in grade 8. One was a fan of radio adventure school was a hopeless cause I might have got good marks but they would have been much better if one had not had to put up with so much abuse from other students over the fact that
I wore glasses one was always hit in the head and it was cracked dozens of time. One remembers more of his time having it stitched up then one does any of one school lesson's much but one can never forget trauma not even today as one grows older all the deep dents ache very much at times. A time of trauma one can remember really well was in grade one when I had missed the first week of school from getting head cracked on going to my first school class.

The once Bowen Catholic primary for one two and three back when I was a lad and my Dad would turn up in this wooden truck a Whippet with wooden spoked wheels every once in awhile to go home..
One did question the Nun in charge and say that one plus one could equal something different than two in another world in time one was quickly given the cane a couple of time for thinking like that.
Nowadays one might be treated a lot different as there could be some truth in the fact there is other dimensions and time which are not inherently all like the present earth value. The Nuns were cruel teachers one got abused and the cuts from the cane for free thinking.
High school was Bowen state High it was only a battle on the lunchtime field of the day from bullies in the class. above shoving hand full of prickles in your pants and roll you in the bloody things class time was fine one got good grades and a bursary. It was amazing one of the bullies followed me around towns later in life that was scary. My father used to take me on adventures on the weekends,from crabbing taking only billy and tea and tea and some homemade bread by dinner time we had more fish and crabs one could eat, we spent lots of the time fishing trawling for mackerel or fishing on some reef areas he knew in this old fishing launch with a thump thump single cylinder diesel engine. When the season for fishing wasn't good we were digging crystals, walking to a mountain of volcanic glass, we dug garnets up near Gumlu where I was later to live in railway camp bondwood huts for some weeks working in the railway bridge gangs after college. I spent my holidays from college working as a nipper in a bridge gang down near Proserpine it was glad relief from the Mt Carmel College abuse situation.

The cassette player and cassettes I bought for college with the cash got stolen a few weeks after being there and when one reported it to the dorm brother I was the evilest student in the 30 bed dormitory. One would go study late into the night to escape the spit being thrown on ones bed covers trying to get to sleep a lot of nights. Mt Carmel College I could blame my early heavy smoking on one never smoke before going there and when I left after two years one was a drum packet a week smoker it took me many years later to give the habit up . One had become an introvert after the college experience it just made me see there was all types of evil out here in the world some it so petty children that never grow up. But one was really lucky in some sorts of ways to the bully type people I had net because I got to experience life they had not some at the college were long term boarders been there for years their parents didn't want them at all.

My father had some wild looking trucks when I was a in primary school most could go bush real easy for fishing and prospecting he did have a habit of catching these enormous snake the were put in the ceiling of the hose to eat the sparrows out .
My Father knew all the cool place to find things made my teenage and early years the most interesting anyone could wish for
I thought it was awesome as first job as trainee bridge carpenter got experience with Adze's and other tools in the gang with my father and some of the cool old dude he knew. It was a cool experience despite sometimes the hardships to go to work and live with wood stove, kero fridge and kero pressure light situation for book reading in the hut along the tracks out in the never never, we could go explore bush and go fishing in the afternoons.
One got strong from drinking all the Sustragen and weight lifting at college one had to do that to beat back the bullies at their bashing games. Lifting and throwing around lumps of wood some forty kilos a couple meters long while balanced on another was easy work after a bit of practise.
Even today ones free thinking isn't taken seriously by everyone one might have some awesome figures in social media circles but the one that I really need is the Geologist or paleontologist that will come out of their cupboards of ignorance and support my theories which I am sure are correct. Seeing one could be waiting till the day they are throwing dirt on the roof of the wooden box
I have found it important to leave some sort of explanation for the items especially the fossil's I will probably leave behind in my Museum for my children. One can't just leave behind a cluttered unexplainable mess, anyway the research process has taught me some things I never knew about Evolution and Life. I studied Agriculture and animal Husbandry in state High school and excelled in that area It was Biology orientated with classifying species of insect and animals. One had a choice of the metal work / wood work, tech drawing, direction which was the most popular but due to my struggle with eyesight, the glasses weren't always the perfect healing of the not being able to see aliment. It was the wisest choice as later I studied Biology in Grade 11 and 12 and got 4, 5 and 6 out of 7 the top score. The history Teacher was a lay teacher to the cool old dude Mr Watts he used to drift off into telling us stories of his time he spent in the middle east . The Science teacher also a lay teacher at the Brothers boarding school was a awesome dude Mr Blick he was a bit 60's hippy with a small type of permaculture farm. he was inspiration for self sufficiency ie ideas that got me lots of important contacts later in life when I run my nursery business. Knowledge is everything but whether you have one of these degrees items seems the important criteria in life one never got much of a chance of University education as when I left school from Mt Carmel College one parents had to be rich to pay for one to attend University back in those days. It was we made the country broke again Conservative style of Government they never care the poverty in society so it was of to manual work to go. Ignorance of Governments in the supply of assets the Country's Youths Education is a downfall of Society. Eventually one is working so much there is not much time for structured education by any facilities and pressures of life bills brings stress, gains that could have been made in Personal and overall society's progress are all tossed aside. It is a bit like Politicians do to us these day except they don't work.
My Grandmother had a house of collections she probably had the most influence on me with my collecting antiques, my Father never got to inherit anything because of alcoholism with my Uncle. My uncle I found out later had lots of person issues with his life that drove him to such a helpless situation there was no help really back those days from too many people my Father tried to help him best he could but one day we were told uncle Jack who had been sober for a week never woke up from his afternoon nap . that was shock to the system we had to bury uncle Jack
He sold the lot for the taste of the spirit so I was determined to have a nice collection of stuff and keep away from alcohol though for a while at the age of 20 I was living with a woman Lynette Little we got married after a year. The garden wedding was funny, an Italian friend Peter Gravino stepped out of the crowd as I was going to put the ring on her, he was the stabbed victim of my Lynette ,. He shouted don't do it Marc it will the biggest mistake you will ever make, Then she signed the wrong line on the certificate

I just don't remember stuff especially anything to do with trauma , my first wife was a small pretty like a doll but if I come home late from working overtime in the sugar season booking wagons in the railway goods office I was playing up with a married woman who worked there. This woman Robyn used 2 bring me cakes at work because I looked sickly and thin, but she was married i never flirted with her even, My wife threw everything from knives, large plates bottles anything she could grab, but I never yelled or hit, her mother told me she was unstable, She as on some medication for psychoprenia. I said it was okay she will grow out of it, well she had a miscarriage I wasn't told about & a couple months later I come home and the van was MT she sold everything to the people in the park who talked her into leaving and disappeared,.

A couple yrs later she rang me wanting money for a flat for south, she had left the dude she had moved in with after leaving me, well I sent her money for a yr, i wanted a couch to sleep on my way to Brisbane to sell sapphires I had dig and had cut, well all was cool I had couch. Well it was 2 am in the morning and she turned on all the lights and started vacuuming the house. I had a pet cat i had to put in it's box and pack up and leave and drive to Brisbane, I lost my cat in a suburb down there I had to pullup & rest only hard from her once more asking money/ to move flat's once more, Well I sent her a 1500 so she could move again and that is sort of end of story. I was always good friends with her Mother yrs after that she used to have me bring my laundry, had to go and pick it up and have a chat for hrs, but Lynnette got no idea and just don't want to know Met the Guy who she moved in with after she left me a year after she left him he was pleased she left , he said she was crazy, One thing she used to take revenge on people, she accused the neighbour of killing our cat that disappeared he had an aluminium boat worth a mint she went out at night & filled the bottom full of holes with her special sewing scissors & stabbed one of my friends, not bad luckily..

She left sold the caravans collection to buy a ticket and nobody bother to look for her for a week. One didn't find out till years later she had a miscarriage and doctor gave here there serapac medicine she used eat to many, like lollies and make her angry and throw things at people not handy at all, after a marriage break up I used to go on a binge for some stupid reason or depressive state but lucky I used to realise my failings and go cold turkey and rid the body of such evil stuff. Going bush and nature finding gems and fossils was a good distraction.

Eventually I got out of the railway office and completed with training journeys in Brisbane an electrical linesman training course with the CEB organisation in Emerald it was an awesome job one did get a few minor shocks electrical wise but lived through the lot heart stronger than before.
One realised when he was lineman going through another man's disturbed dirt was sometimes a profitable business especially when lucky to work the Gem fields but even road cuttings were good exposure points and the tide wand erosion after rain were all time and places to be exploited for the ease of finding good fossils or other rocks and minerals. The gemfields was a great adventure got taken out there first by a good friend Stanley Wilson I met while working the Court House in Mackay he was like a brother to me we journeyed into the bush looking at old gold mines and a few sapphire mines. Though much like me wasn't impressed in digging lots of dirt for the chance to find a rock would rather go around first thing after rain and find stones which he was good at found forty carat blue green stone one day I couldn't raise the money to buy of him before some other friend did but lucky so I hadn't as most of my gemstone collections were stolen just getting them out of the bank's safe one night after was supposed to show to a buyer that never turned up after he had left this world, he was just a person who wanted to live in a shack up the hills and eat wild food.

The old car when I lived in Emerald caravan park Stanley and I built this out of other wrecks and give it a coat of enamel was awesome for the dirt road areas of the railway sidings where he had a job when first moving there. A random memory for the railway camp evenings Stan and I went from Emerald out to his friends hut he was working in the gang previously with this man whose wife was Nice and friendly to most people but some thought of her as a witch, well we went to a séance out in the bush with this witch lady and some others just cards on a table swearing the glass wiped them of in fury put out the lantern a couple times and there was no wind only in the lantern, so many voices< over the other side, I was working as a clerk in the railway had been a clerk in the railway after being a bridge gang worker then a clerk in the Magistrates Court offices Mackay then moved out west to be a clerk in Emerald Railway offices.

I was good at bookwork and ledgers ticket office work and spent weekends roaming the gemfield with friend Stan looking for Sapphire mostly in the rivers where it was cool.
Then one day his brother came to town and told me some of the young people who he had been helping shot him. That was good reason never to like guns ever again weather the killing was deliberate of accident it doesn't matter the weapon was used to take a life.
Leaving the safety zone of the Electricity board because it gave me enough money to invest in property was probably not the best decision but they were eventually going to get rid of and replace with contracts. The railway Lineman's weren't all well trained it was always dodging possible accident till there was one I didn't.
Before this accident one was always fit and and earned good money working could afford read any scientific magazine and this time one had started the small room full of books one calls his library today. With Books came business ideas the Tree Nursery on my property as side Business part of my Permaculture interest and one need books to classify all the plants and find more that were easy and to grow and saleable trees or shrubs. For a while a small essential oil and soap making industry flourished. One had some idea after reading such books like State of the World that one need to contribute some tree's to the system and always dreamt of that million number though one only used to turnover in a good year up to ten thousand.
Later got into the seed collecting by the kilo which lasted a couple of years before the main dealer failed in some payment of 1000 dollars. Then the Government bought in laws to pay bigger fee's on some plants with expensive environmental impact surveys one had to carry out made it just to impossible for the little man to do.
The major trauma in my life was really when I was sent to Gladstone to work as Linesman for a day 15 January 1992 by the L/H Col who I was supposed to go call out with well he didn't like my four eye situation either so was exiled to work with nobodies whose L/H Mick was not much better ripped me of a 35 foot mast without warning from a few miles away.
One suffered 3 crushed vertebra in upper back one broken in lower back and both hips broke one way or another a severely compound fractured left elbow. One never had the life flash before one eye's business before going to die it was a long way down from that height and all one could think of was not being home to see my child or not being around to see my wife and other family anymore, there was no bright lights on impact but just a peaceful darkness that one was aware of , there was a brief dream it didn't do me any damage and I got up and carried on with life but conscious bought realisation that all was not good and looking at one arm bought the first feeling of the hey this is severe pain.
This major event in time if not had happened then none of the fossil's would have been found one would have been still in the Queensland Railway network one spent many years as a Linesman and like the challenge it gave. I didn't want to lay around taking antidepressants that were sometime making me sicker and codeine based painkiller just made me severely ill. the forever changing of the different types of antidepressants one was virtually ordered to take was completely crazy and later related to lots of lower stomach bleeding.
I can relate to the Serapac reaction with my first Wife in being personality changers as the doctor had me on them for a while during my mediation conference time of my rail accident when even the railway union solicitor I had didn't want to support me by taking my case to court and one did take an some 60 Valium with a bottle of rum that is not something a normal reasoning person would do there was a sense of the loss of all hope. One has got away with so many near death experiences even my sister used to say as a teenager I was a cat running out of lives' . There was just way too many time when others had concussed me into the darkness of unconscious one should be as punch drunk as a politician . The medication one was fed after the Railway accident really changed ones personality all the time it was such a unsettled period of life. One was talked into taking the family to the Philippines to live the bottom island where my wife come from before the Internet days well the children got sick that much the medical bills were eating away at our cash I made the decision to come back to Australia after only 12 months in fear of being financially stranded like some other Aussies I met there were.
But in that 12 months one had affected so many people's lives and some badly one thinks the young solid built strong Annas and wife Juliet were struggling peasants had to syphon their water from a broken pipe at certain times of the day looked so sad to me so one got them a fibreglass tank to store water and restocked their store a couple times to help them along but his wife made Annas work so much to pay back anything one did he ended up taking a heart attack moving some wheelbarrows of sand for me. I had been trained in CPR with my lineman training and thought I was going to get him as for a while thought I felt a pulse even if it was faint, then his family come and thought I was doing him harm so dragged me away by the time I explained the light went out in his eyes holding him but he did smile maybe just the muscles relaxing but guess he was in peace with no more shouting from Juliet to do this do that. One had to finance his Wake for a week and purchase a block of land to help his wife financially it was the least one could do to help the loss a bit.

The piece of land and Juliet's pet pig Juliet use to sit all day making plated roof mats for the houses she owned the land behind the house where we live which was swap with Nipa that Annas was always sent to go harvest fronds even in the heat of the day but sing along he used to chop a lot to keep her busy the money she made was invest in items like beer and treats that were sold to the workers of the soap factory down the road.

One has since tried to be a lazy archaeologist seeing digging things constantly no good any more for back though some swinging of pick digging crystals seemed to straighten the back out some for a little while dust is always a turnoff. One learnt to go do that sort of work in the rain sometime one can put up with the rain only in summertime now though. One has dug a lot of bottle dumps and other dumps around Mt Morgan one sulphur and ash it was only a rain or cool off after noon place to dig for a period of time when the itch of air of the rubbish stopped one truly a toxic place.
It I blame the toxic chemicals there on my Buffy dog's bad mastitis as she use to abort the pups after going there just waiting for me near the rubbish. It is a burden on her one doesn't have the funds to take her any veterinary treatment one has been waiting for an Angel but they are overburdened with work elsewhere in the world.
I am not the sort of person that things should be begged for and the world has so many more important priorities like children starving that need so much help one just have to believe there is a God out there but he is so way to busy with trying to counteract man's destruction. One still believes there is some power in Prayer even if it is just to calm the spirit into some harmony with the outer universal power of God he has given me so many awesome things from the past, times spent alone in the mining practise is beneficial prayer and meditation wise a good distraction nowadays from the pains of broken bone growing nodes of their own.

Spooky the cat my sons pet well my cat seeing I have bought him back to life a few times from people shooting him, now sort of blind in both eyes he will like his bit of electric blanket in winter and has got used to me having to get up all night to bend the body preventing some sort of seizure and cramps. My wife claims I am trying to make my pets live forever seeing all their related offspring are all gone to the pet heaven .
The never ending trauma condition my body wakes up with each morning from my accident bought a need to escape from reality of constant pain conventional painkillers just made me sick with ulcers. Going bush proved to give me exercise and the time to look at other things of nature in life helps one forget the trials and difficulties for a while there was the need for fresh food and exercise to keep fit to stop the body dying faster lead to some awesome sometimes difficult journeys and fossil discoveries that not many other people have achieved .
One has had some luck in finding awesome items one has the long sighted eyes that can spot defects in nature from a distance and now with a broken back permanent scoliosis of the spine has the eye's more to scanning the ground when there is no birds to observe in the sky. The scoliosis of my back has put a permanent curve in my spine which make it difficult at time to keep my neck straight and head up there is some growth on my neck that also is a hindrance in a way but not in another as the constant looking down leaves one nothing else but to scan it for whatever is in taking.
There has been these voices at times to get and go from the journeys to the fossil beds of Port Alma when I have found the most awesome of items. a couple time It was a voice that made me walk just another 100 yards of mud and gravel to find the artifact knife and the second vertebra.
One has been sick at numerous of these times but one was determined to do the distance sometime when resting from stress or I made myself just walk that extra few yards mud to find good things catch a feed of crabs and be back home as planned. finding the Placoderm plate was one of those time one had stopped to rest on the edge of nearly fainting from exhaustion because the mud nowadays is so fine from the sea level rising erosion of the flats. One had the thought of finding the ancient fish part as he was looking at the ground and the shape appeared out of the muddiest spot ever seeing the pattern amongst the mud made the body much better, that I called thinking it into existence.
One always had a companion with Buffy the dog to go with on the Journeys she has been a faithful companion and now she has been burdened with age and a mastitis problem I am totally at a lost to travel alone a Doctor without a companion is lonely situation and the burden of the mud now since the wild erosion be it rise of sea levels or just change in currents has made the environment down there much more difficult with one injuries.
One does always dream of that next summer when one is healthy for just one more trip into the wilderness even if it is alone. There is never the thought off, crap the car might break down, one might have difficulties in getting back home, eventually one will toss those worries to the wind of determination and escape to the prehistoric time one needs to dream.
Meantime one has got his Art to sometime give time of discovery and distraction but art only seems to stream when there was somewhat less worries than the present economic situation good paints so awful expensive and my sister have sent me good paints and brush when they were doing good with business, those times have seemed to have passed with our recent war monger Government who have got no idea what they are doing to people. One did need art for my book probably painted some of its art before the book idea came feasible but there was always the dream in the subconscious to write a book to spread some of the knowledge one has collected.
Art nowadays is being destroyed in its acronym of abstract due to imbalances in the Political and Economical outlook. One needed to be happy in the sense he could afford to travel and explore a bit but due to the economic outlook and it's influence on worry in the health sense pain times can increase from the stress one did get some physio when the other government was in power that help my body movement and pain situation a lot but we are back in the stone age it seems. Sleep deprivation is now one of the art killing situations cold weather is hard on the body.
One might be the only one happy to be give the gift of global warming to make the winters less severe and the osteoarthritis pain a bit less cold winter one has situations where the body has thought it has some cancer situation and given me all the symptoms and the look of being on death's door. A lot of friends one has met most being husbands of my wife's friends have died some from old age and some from cancer since one has been back in Australia so one has kept up the history of losing people.
Even my Daughter Helena always commented we were always attending so many funerals never something happy like a marriage. But one will live a long painful life just to spite those that said you shouldn't be alive with so much damage The doctor said to me you probably won't walk after the accident you know I said don't tell me that I will prove you wrong, so things could be better again by summer one will always try and stay a bit fit to attempt any task when one gets the weird urge to just go drive to go walkabout.
There is so much that has happened my life that book could go on nearly forever, time has had so many dimensions and experiences.

A friend the other day said to me you got your retirement all planned from your stamps fossils, bottle collections, neem leaf business and small nursery always something of interest all in one spot he said I get out and look at an empty beer carton in the morning and feeling totally depressed. And my neighbour is complaining about boredom due to not having any money got no hobbies. That helps one feel a lot better this week at least.
Take care of each other out there and meditate and pray a bit more often to strengthen the resolve to look after the people and the environment or else you are going to burn one way or another. Hope my book is an educational resource, I tried to put some proper ancient Aboriginal Dreamtime Spirit somewhere among the stories I could find from ancient times. Ciao.
Parts of my small Museum collection Chenery St Mt Morgan
open by appointment, mjknight6@bigpond.com

https://www.facebook.com/marcus.knight/media_set?set=a.2008059639849.2108920.1194444396&type=3

Bowen Aboriginal site's, some upgraded info

2013-03-25T05:20:00.001-07:00

One of the largest monolithic sites I have seen is at Rose Bay, Bowen, locally known as #MotherBedocksRock. To me, this is an #Aboriginal carved marker stone facing the now ocean, which, back 100,000+ years, was land of a much bigger Island, much of which was eroded away, according to my research with the help of AI Sea levels were extremely high back 50,000years my blog below has Oyster shells and other shells among mega fauna subfossils found in 2 /12 metre excavation Dee River Mt Morgan 1600 ft above sealevel. Oyster shells can say Ocean was only a days walk away.

https://geoscience69.blogspot.com/2025/08/fossils-and-sub-fossils-excavation-by.html

Archaeology of the Dreamtime by Josephine Flood < points to sea levels were 60 to 80 metres higher than today before 50,000 years ago as the Kartan Aborigines a small large brow Aboriginal who mainly used large hand tools spears weren't used, though clubs were used by the Aboriginal tribes of Kangaroo Island who lived in the Mountain areas as none of their artefacts occur on lower land near now ocean. Sea shells were found in 2 metre excavations in caves with huge stone block artefacts of unknown use.< see large block artefacts and sea shells mainly oysters and snails, my AI blog and large block artefacts in this blog>. #Tasmania was least 1/3 submerged with the sea levels at that time. Soil samples indicate that their burning stopped before the ocean dropped once more, leaving a land bridge that disappeared at a rate of one meter per year until recent times. There were no Aboriginals on the island when white men discovered #KangarooIsland. They have two different times of vegetation burning stopping and two different types of artefacts. The second version was a much smaller version, they made sharps that were used for spears and axes, the same as that of recent tribes all around Australia.

There is the probability that the Eastern early Pliestocene Tribes and the Tasmanian tribes were once people who migrated from the Easter Island direction
There is much evidence around granite areas in Bowen of large pick type marker stones. These I believe, were used as tool by some really large men to chip and fashion the larger rock, as do the more modern Aboriginal people do with creating their own decorated Hammer Stones to be used for the production of spears and knives. There was a pigmy tribe living in the mountains of the Atherton Tablelands when white men first arrived, according to lots of books I have read. Were they remnants of the Kartans?

So from what I gather, there must have been large numbers of these people, to the size of small cities, to be so organised, especially in the thinking of using their spare time to carve such large, almost statue-like rock, maybe an Easter Island influence here.
In numerous studies, it has been found that the Aboriginal people of the day hunted the megafauna animals by getting them to fall into holes and then clubbing them to death. To put a time factor on Bowen, ancient Aboriginal tribes would be similar to the times of Mega fauna and freshwater tree's growing on the now Port Alma.
One can look at numerous rocks long moof Bowen beaches and some now estuaries and see numerous artifacts and examples of right angle cutting of the granite extrusions and areas of artefact's and numerous large marker stones near beach areas where the granite fault structures near by are only small and mostly buried it is baffling how they got such large stones to the locations are in with out some basic engineering practises.
The beach bays would have been important areas in past Aboriginal Life. Areas of lush vegetation around rocks provided shelter for food sources to hunt the ocean when tides receded, a collecting place for fish, crustaceans and molluscs at high tide a place to fish, swim and socialise.
This recent link shows how little we know about the evolution of man for a long period of time.
My Book Australia an Ancient Past ( a coverage of all my history blogs with links to details behind highlighted words)

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/million-year-old-human-fossil-find-in-ethiopia-is-oldest-known-human-ancestor/story-fnjwl2dr-1227248570621?from=public_rss

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-28/fossils-found-from-new-human-ancestor-species-scientists/6502696

I probably dispute the walking out of Africa story of evolution as I believe the earliest tribes of people lived down on what is now deep oceans and eventually moved up onto higher levels of ground as sea levels rose all around the World. We have Little knowledge of the fossil heritage lying on the beds of the oceans of sediments, and there are whole cities under water in some areas of the world, and the land has not sunk from any geological activity.
http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/lambeck_k/pdf/139.pdf
A useful link allowing one to realise the changing ocean depths along the Australian coast from the late Pleistocene.
If there is scientific evidence of people in Asia at 63 thousand years ago, the Aboriginal people were on the fringe near oceans around Australia when the ocean was much further away than today's levels.
One of the oldest cemeteries in the World holds 40 Aboriginal bodies buried on Kow Swamp shore near the Murray River in Victoria. Previous research shows that these people had thicker skulls and heavily built faces. They were first shown to have been buried only 7000 to 10,000 years ago but recent research of carbon dating of the soil they were buried in showed they were buried some 22,000 years ago during the peak of the last Ice age.
Why is it significant one might ask? Although there wasn't any ice near Kow Swamp during the glacial maximum, it was a lot cooler than today and had been getting that way for the last 40,000 years .
If the Burial dates are right, then the deteriorating climatic conditions could have been the cause of this group evolving robust body size and skull thickness difference, rather than some different ancestry link, but there is a possibility of another separate, different original race of Aboriginal earlier Pleistocene tribes, and these bodies were remnants.
At times during the Pleistocene, when food as in the mega animals that roamed the lands, was plentiful, he was numerous in organised small township situations. The theory is born out of social cohesion, being the size of the carving, small groups make small markers stone so the bigger the territory marker stone the more people that would were involved with the carving of it. Then the group was more organised in most parts of social life, from entertainment, to food production and had some form of central Government or group of people as Chiefs in charge of activities not much different from today's behaviour.

Come later in the Pleistocene the sea level rose at a rate of a foot a year over time the tribes over the outer areas were slowly pushed inland, the evidence of the tribes at Mt Morgan Dee river sediments shows signs of a thriving community the people who still for a time had an abundance of food, as their time was making oyster picks tells me the ocean wasn't far away.

Stone carving or rock engraving in research and tourist value has usually concentrated on the Central Australian rock art as of it's more detailed work. Engraving of rocks was found in most areas except for Victoria and central New South 'Wales east of the Darling river where the Tribes instead made bora rings. There is no mention of possible carving of these bora stones, one has . .found numerous carved smaller stones in Central Queensland

Western Australia's north is known for it wall paintings some small rock carvings and the odd grinding groove for sharpening of stone axe's. Port Headland, Warburton ranges and the ranges of Central Australia, South Australia into New South Wales round Sydney and along Hawksbury river north to Brisbane Carnarvon to Laura in North Queensland all have noted galleries of rock engraving and carving. Aboriginal people had good intentions whether it be Ceremony or Storytelling, to keep the past alive but we can only guess their real meaning and never really grasp the spiritual concept it had over the people hold them together as a tribal unit for survival.
Tree carving was prominent in New South Wales and Victoria, circular and square shapes with motifs of animals were carved in the tree's usually marking a well-liked elders. Once there was hundreds of carved tree's all over the landscape but over time and clearing of land for agricultural work, and just time destroyed most. The tree's were carved at the time of the ceremony, but there was never any maintenance done they were once carved avoided maybe because of possibility of upsetting spirits of the dead.

http://www.aboriginalheritage.org/history/history/

Wallabies come out at night to feed on salt near the waters edge maybe eat the odd shellfish like ghost crab and browse on fresh seaweed bought in by the tides.

Cottonwood trees ( Hibiscus tiliaceus ) line the beach , the Aboriginal people soaked the bark until it was removed from the useless material, then used it to make dilly bags, fishing lines net's and even ropes for Dugong and Turtle harpoons.

Bobby Nuts or Sterculia quadrafila grow abundantly around the bays of Bowen and produce very prolifically once a year

The brush turkey a common bird would come to feed on any scraps left lying on beaches early in the morning. Turkeys might have a bit complicated as a bird to prey on, so therefore would have been in larger numbers and this would have meant more nest so eggs would have been on the Aboriginal diet just finding them in the mounds of sticks and mulch the turkeys built was the trick.

http://www.aboriginalculture.com.au/bushfoods.shtml

There are records of white People living with Aboriginals in total harmony, one story is from my hometown of Bowen.

We were educated with this knowledge of James Morrill when I went to school and visited the Bowen Historical Society Museum on many occasions.
James Morrill was shipwrecked on the Barrier reef in 1846 and washed ashore on the coast of cape Cleveland and survived to live for 17 years among the surrounding tribes till making contact with advancing white settler's at Inkerman station in 1863. Very little records were kept of his ordeal but it is known that he was a tiring worker for better relations with Aboriginal people as the settlers took over more of their land and did add some knowledge of the Aboriginal ways but Authorities didn't take full advantage of this and he returned to Society. He lived for two years in Bowen before being buried at Bowen cemetery in 1865.. He Married a Eliza Ann Ross a servant girl employed by the Police Magistrate, Mr P Pinnock and had one child James Ross Morrill born Bowen 1865.
Bowen Historical Society still teach of James Morrill's adventures, and a Memorial was erected in the Harbour area to the man of courage and great character.
http://journals.publishing.monash.edu/ojs/index.php/ha/article/view/906 is an Article about James Morrill

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/shipwrecked-and-kidnapped-a-tale-of-two-castaways/5623562

Bowen was the first Town in North Queensland in 1861 with Dalrymple as Governor. It was a deep-water port for the export and import of stock also later a shipping point for some of the copper and Gold of the North. There are numerous small rich finds of gold around Bowen itself. My Grandfather, my Father and other brothers had a small lease at Merango fields. Dad told me one year they had total amount gold produce as 60 ounces, which my grandfather lost buried for safety. My Grandfather Jim Knight had the dark skin of the Aboriginal descendants in our Family, he had a 2 pot stamper in his backyard in George street when I was a child was always building boats some were anchored down Doughty's creek just over the hill about a mile. I grew up with a gold washing dish but lack of good eyesight was a disadvantage so I concentrated on fishing and roaming the bush with him and my father, finding gems and other minerals. On a journey to my home town to stay with family I remembered where my father had told me of an early settlement during the days of the first settlers on Doughty creek. Dad told me of an Aboriginal man who had the bone pointed at him by a so-called witch doctor. The man in a state of depression, went down to an area where his relatives once lived near Doughty's Creek and eventually starved himself to death. I had not explored this area since my childhood picking periwinkles among the mangroves.

Red mangrove ( Bruguiera rhizophora ) <right> was the only useful timber for the Aboriginal people it's timber was hard and springy, good for weapon manufacture, especially throwing sticks. White mangrove has a toxic sap, its leaves when burnt would bring on blindness and possible death. One could speculate the leaves were used as a possible fish poison, but no records have yet been found.

Fish poisons were used by the Aboriginal people, but one would think it would be akin to using explosives to kill fish as smaller fish would also be impacted more than the big ones.

Toxins of the plant material in the form of alkaloids, saponins and tannins, though extremely toxic to man the amount absorbed by the fish did not effect it edibility.

Plant material was pounded into shreds and thrown in the water and after a wait of an half an hour to a day, fish would slowly suffocate and would be collected.

Some acacia barks that were rich in tannins were used in this process, besides the common cork wood species.

Aboriginal people along the coast were very skilled at making canoes out of the bark of large gum trees. My father told me that Iron bark (Eucalyptus crebra) was the best one. Large paper bark rafts were also very common in areas with lots of small estuaries and winding mangrove creeks.

http://www.aboriginalculture.com.au/fishingmethods.shtml

They understood the way of spearing crabs and fish among the mangroves, for some reason, Bowen has no crocodiles in the local Estuaries. One thinks there were, but they were hunted out and eaten and the areas of water between north to Homehill Molongo creek area is deep and has large amounts of sharks for crocodiles to venture south and a similar situation from north, the rivers where we fished near halfway to Proserpine.

Gloucester island a rocky outcrop with no permanent water and has no animals might have had People and animals before any great flood that would have slowly died out. The water passageways between the mainland are fairly deep and have very large tidal current shifts that would have made many stranded prisoners, Aboriginal and animal alike.

Sea levels from the Pleistocene really show the extra land that was available and there was no obvious signs of great floods till later in the era as most of the preceding million years was one of ice age and droughts making a lot of the continent dry and uninhabitable so the coastlines would have been the most habitable and therefore the place to find any viable evidence on man.

Pandanus aquaticus. Scrub around this area still have some remnants of the past, such as the Pandanus palm tree; now the seed was small and a lot of work to get out. The palms leaves were easy lit as fire starter, and among the leaves, small marsupials like Kangaroo rat and Bandicoot lived. The leaves were set alight to chase any possible animal or even the odd snake out. Spiny anteater would venture into the leaves to find assorted bugs, which, besides ants, was part of its diet.
The leaves were an important source of fibre after being made more flexible by passing through fire, and the spiny midrib removed, they were plaited into mats, sieve bags, armlets, mat cloaks and sails for their primitive canoes. The young roots and middle inner stem from young plants were edible, but probably only reserved for hard times.
Pandanus leaves were twined into bags, and the leaves were stripped into long, thin, flat pieces. Twinning is weaving in which a system of vertical warp strands is held in place by wefts of horizontal strands. The wefts are moved together, twisted as they go and locking a warp on each twist. Most bags could be made flexible, closely or open-woven. Pandanus bags were used to strain food substances like crushed Cycad or macrozamia seeds, sometimes just placed in running clean water, which would remove soluble toxins, making an edible starch flour for crude bread cakes. Bags are also used for sieving and storage of nardoo, wild rice, acacia seed, and other native grass seeds. Both Men and women were skilled in the manufacture of string for nets and mesh for making their own bags. String was also easily spun from types of hair fibres and was strong and very durable. Commenting on a variety of string backs in 1878 R Brough Smyth said that all their twine bags were very strong and well put together.
Fishing net were common with the larger tribes but
Individual mesh traps, much like a large butterfly half opened triangular structures were used the trap was made to close on chasing of the fish into it. Net making was very sophisticated and had multi-purpose uses from catching fish by scooping or Trapping and on land used for trapping birds or other game chased or escaping fire into them. In central Australia nets were made extremely strong by by combining sinew from Wallaby or Kangaroo into the twine.

Dilly bags were an important item for the Woman food collector. She needed a carry bag she could run with and hang by her side when climbing and retrieving precious honeycomb from the beehives.
Men needed bags to carry small tools, a belt and knife sheaths.

The Witch doctor had one with fancy ornamental work to collect his herbs and animal parts for his curing potions.

The seed pod of the Pandanus is usually soft fleshy when first ripe with a very sweet taste it was multiple kernel with woody nut capsules the thickness of a match, which would need a lot of to be a main meal, it would have been a lot of work to break open. The pods were broken in apart and put in the fire for a while to crack the hard inner to get the small almond-tasting kernel. The flesh on the ripe orange seed pods had a considerable amount of sugar and starch in it, and would have been helpful as an edible in extreme conditions. Dried kernels were ideal for fire transportation, slowly smouldering on a dirt-covered tray. Most Aboriginal people were very skilled at the fire-making process, but it was always a much easier option to carry one's fire from camp to camp and if it was to be across river's the fire was put on some clay in a canoe. Slow-burning materials were used like iron wood and bark, mulga bark , dried cones of Banksia and dried bracket fungi growths of tree's.

Ipomoea pes-caprae, Goats foot morning glory. The ground creeper species of Ipomoea meant there was fresh, maybe a bit saline water in areas under the sand. Also, the vine produces an edible tuber much like a woody yam, which was baked before eaten. Small crabs and other invertebrates sometimes inhabit these areas, looking for food at night, and most likely they were trapped by the Aboriginal people. These areas were usually good places to access some form of fresh water seepage, it would be only slightly salty, and if filtered using vegetation, would be suitable for survival when none other was available. Trees with knotty wood hollows were cleaned out to store and collect water.

Livistonia australis is a mainly coastal swamp and floodplains Palm the fibre leaves were also used in the production of bags, baskets, fishing, nets and fishing lines. The cabbage from the centre was only eaten in times of dire need as it meant the tree would be killed once taken. There was a possibility that these seeds were in a looked-after propagation and exploited when a young tree was used for its cabbage on a small scale by the people. There is evidence in agricultural practices with many other plants, like onion grass plants, that weren't just exploited and just left alone till some regrew. The women knew to replant onion grass in rows so other practices can't be ruled out, as food security was important to all tribes.

Large amounts of paperbark trees ( Melaluca agentia or
quininervia ) would have also been around the bush. The inner bark, when pieced lengthwise down the tree will produce drinkable survival water on a hot day. Water was also sourced by digging the roots of eucalyptus and the Bottletree sometimes were cut to tap the soft watery inside wood, or the roots exposed and cut would provide drinkable moisture for survival. Young roots were an edible starch food; baking on fire gave it some flavour.
Well there along the edge of the scrub and the mangrove edge and a small sandy Islet, I found one granite long rock which had the base pointed. This is not a first with Aboriginal pick type rocks I have found numerous at other sites around Queensland obvious an important stone one like this probably took a long time to make.

Gidee Gidee Berry or Crab's eye vine ( Abrus precatorius meaning used in prayers) was vine from the Coastal Bowen scrubs which the seeds were used a decoration it is said drilled and used as beads which really shows the Aboriginal people had extremely good vision were skilled in the use of small tool like drills something sometimes overlooked by researchers who are interested only in macro tool manufacture and use. Echidna spines of some large fish bones were used in the fine drilling with small hammers of stone.
The scrubs of the coast were much more versatile in food types than the West of the range areas of the east coast of Australia.
http://www.jbhawkinsantiques.com/uploads/articles/TasmanianAppleseedNecklacesAustraliana-PDF.pdf

http://www.npywc.org.au/tjanpi-desert-weavers/tjanpi-program/

Burdekin Plum was very much a coastal plant that was salt resistant even as a Child in Bowen one walked among the mangroves near Pilot point and would come across small sandy islands out of the mud where numerous plum tree's grew with a few other fresh water tree's. One would collect a billy full of periwinkles, once in a while catch a crab or fish and have protein and fruit for lunch.

Strangler figs, attracted Brush Turkeys and other fig birds, the figs being edible but bland were sometimes used as bait in fish and crab traps by Aboriginal people.

White Cedar is more of a coastal tree; its leaves were used as a fish toxin and the long, straight hard timber made good spear shafts and fishing rods.

All these large stones have the notable pointed ends.

This rock I believe was used to break pieces off the larger chunks of extrusive granite in the area the high silicon content of the Granite fault rock gave it hardness making it quite useful in carving all the other types of granite and monolithic type rock figures round the coast It may have been a marker stone but chisels were common tools made by all tribes

One can understand now why in the book the Living Stone age the tribe would always disintegrated into the bush to join other tribes once the markers stone or ceremonial stones were lost or taken. If this happened in all solid fault areas of rock which unlike gravel areas had no free boulder rock this type of stones would have been necessary for chipping other chunks of rocks to make hand axes spearheads knives and hammers or picks and without them food probably be harder to get which is pretty simple science. Not all parts of Australia gravel beds one million to forty thousand years ago lot was covered with snow or remnants of glaciers in the highlands. The Aboriginal people lived further out on what is now sea and eventually migrated up to higher where the glaciers had been. Little rock remained except for exposed fault rocks in lots of areas so the long rock would have been the most important stone to the tribe's survival as a pick to break small chips of the larger for axes and spearheads..

Other singular long rocks round this area seem scarce some guess could have been buried with white man disturbance but this one is the same structure as the granite rocks round the mangrove islet area this right angle carving of the rocks does not look like some erosion effect rather man made all large rocks round this area have some sort of carving activity, one has ochre that has been that embedded it has been there thousands of years. These rocks were obvious core rocks from which numerous artifacts over the hundreds of years had been made which could be an explanation for all the odd shaping not just the ordinary idea that heat of rock contracting and expanding did all this weird erosion.

In this area I believed Aboriginals lived before white man arrived and even after also as there is a 1800 black glass bottle dump area with numerous artifacts among the mud some of the glass has evidence of bi facing. There was in the 1920's a copper refinery and part of a township with boat ramp at Doughties creek maybe these areas are the dumps of that activity and as usual the Aboriginal people live of the Settlers dumps, finding many of the rubbish useful and easier to cut than the available rocks.

A close look at a lot of the glass shards, one could say a lot have been cut to use as suitable Knives or spearheads much similar to the glass artifacts found at Mt Morgan.

The ground is littered at the now high tide exposure level of artifacts from your basic hand axes to spears heads. These artifact rocks didn't get washed here they are being exposed from the sediments of another age. This is likely the dump site of the 1920's Bowen copper refinery and first township and as with all towns in early Queensland had a lot of Aboriginal visitors to access resources better than what they had available.

Even as a child with my Grandfather and Father we raided the local dump and then we had competition from the Aboriginal people in the town. Bowen Museum has history of copper refinery in this area and this is the biggest patch of glass and bottles in the area all dating to that period.

Large areas of stone artifacts along the rising banks above being eroded out of the sand that has covered them, the mangrove line is creeping towards the banks where probably was once scrub and supported a reasonable tribe of Aboriginal people mostly surviving of seafood that the creek would have had in abundance.The creek was thriving with prawns and Yabbie beds lots of whiting when I was a youngster over pumping in recent times and and pollutant run off has now diminished them to very small colonies.
Aboriginal people were skilled in the making of lines and nets from collected platted hair.

Near the Long rock area it self one can line up numerous hand axes and knife and spear points

Kings Beach as it now called has large amounts of artefacts at the high tide level been eroded by the rising sea the amount that is there definitely points to a large amount of people over some period of time back in the past and one would gather before recent prehistory times.

Above seems to be a broken basic spear probably later used as a club stone.

On my Second journey to this area, I find more pointed square rocks, very much the same design as small club stones, but these others are so large that one could only think they were stuck in the ground as some sort of totem.

Further out near the main beach are more they seem to be in pairs how did the people get them here only fault rocks close are the ones in Doughties creek it looks physically unlikely that they were carved off them maybe they were.
Before the New settlers had arrived and many thousands of years before sea levels had risen these areas now beach were land, probably scrub with numerous foods from turkey to yams and able to sustain a large population of organised people enough to do such large amounts of work for ritual belief.

The Beach now it would have been much more protected and mangroves much thicker and likely a further way in past times. It would have been the main source of protein in the way of fish caught in stone organised traps at low tide crabs, periwinkles whelks large pipi's and other assorted mollusk.

Whelks like the more muddy environment of the mangroves though there are varieties that live off the slime on rocks. A lot of shell species would not be there today as they were in Aboriginal times. Whelks aren't the most tasty of foods, but we as white people have no idea of what food should taste like, being fed on lot's of sugar and salty types of junk foods. People get used to what is available to eat no matter the taste, if conditions are such they are the only foods around, hunger makes all food taste good.
The different types of razor shell and even pearl-type shells would have disappeared with Pollution from the Copper refinery that was built on the mouth of this creek in the 1920's and just other degradation from Local use there was a boat ramp here in the 1960's

A Lone periwinkle these feed on slime and usually found on the roots of mangroves as a child my father and I collect buckets full of them boiled with some salt and attacked with a safety pin delicious food .

A much more older area of Aboriginal artifacts and sub-fossils has been exposed along the North heads beach the fossil one could date mainly to the Pleistocene and one would have to assume the artifacts also being in the same sediment, being fossil corals.

http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/discoverycentre/600-million-years/timeline/tertiary/

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Past-150000-Years-of-Sea-Level-History-Suggests-High-Rates-of-Future-Sea-Level-Rise.html

The green Genesis rock is exactly the same Devonian Fault rock of the shattered faults at Port Alma. One has to wonder with this picture how deep these fragments of the past go into the hillside.

Club stone made of Genesis fault rock
Some people regard this as North heads or part of Kings beach to me North heads was the lighthouse island off shore, Pilot Point was the name my Father called this beach child many a fishing expedition was spent here one can never remember rocks being unearthed at top of beach back then it by memory was all sand up over the hill.

The beach is much more rocky than it used to be and all being artifacts exposed by the encroaching tides one day soon to be Heritage lost

These rocks are mainly sharps of one sort or another either club stones, axes or spear heads.

We have Numerous large sharpened granite structures same design and similar size the Doughty Creek Totem rocks.

One can just reach around and find an assortment of axes, grinding and club stones .

One can see in this photograph the erosion of the artifacts out of the existing soil part of the Beach an obvious sign of rising sea-levels.

This is low tide and the artifacts being unearthed with the corals and other shells are at the highest point now ocean by rights has never been there in the last 20,000 years so these items must date back some million years or more and the shells and corals around with the artifacts themselves are all Paleozoic sub fossils.

Assorted Pleistocene Eurydesma shell ancient Coral and Stromatoporoid like hammer stone.

http://www.paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=fossil_gallery&sectionnav=search&taxon_id=&state_id=&period_id=8&assemblage_id=&last_section=search&p=2

A large marker Stone or totem stone carved out of what looks like stromatolites. This adds weigh to my argument they are marker stones and not some erosive cracking of other rocks this type of rock different hardness and strata could not fall the exact shape as the others.

Smaller stromatolites club stone and 450 million year black shale small axes or scrapers, other sharps which conform with very early man made rocks for me this would be early Miocene to late Tertiary. These artifacts would have to go into the side of the beach side mountain it would be interesting to know if Flagstaff hill has them right under neath .

Another Stromatolites club stone of the smaller variety.

At the end of the point there is much evidence of these artifacts stones being washed in to the ocean to latter become sand of future beaches if any.

North heads Lighthouse is still able to be accessed with very low tides my father and I used to spear fish at night when i was child some 40 years ago. Stoney Island of to the right is a island described right many boulders allover no fresh water available much similar to long landmark Gloucester Island behind beach access is limited with mainly rocky cliffs along the beaches with steep mountains and no fresh water . These islands are just ancient faults from 450 million years ago, they are large volcanic extrusions with very little fertile aspects.or even beaches on a lot of the parts of the Island

Flagstaff mountain from above the beach yet once 70,000 years to 40,000 thousand years ago there was probably land all around out where there is now ocean. Back further in the Pleistocene with only patches of ocean with shallow coral reefs further out.

At this point of the road town side of Flagstaff mountain one finds the answer to the question did these go under the mountain or not.

The same fossil corals and Brachipod shells as the beach with now only mangrove swamps which would have been some what deep elevation since modern day #holocene sedimentation

https://www.beachsafe.org.au/beach/qld0960

Around to the Port area from top of Hummock

The port area all deeper area than the beach side of Flagstaff hummock which is areas of rock out to the lighthouse island.

Both photos show swamp areas which extend right into town this is just recent holocene sedimentation so was ocean at one time and that time was when there was a tribe of Aboriginals carving the artifacts in the coral and shell level this was probably land also when they cut the tools but part of a beach. Seeing Aboriginal people didn't really carry on any agriculture to create this much overburden one can only suspect a gradual rise in sealevel is why the hummock is so high and a gradual chipping away of a fault rock mountain at highest end of hill which has been exploited as a quarry while I was a child.

Towards Rose Bay and Mother Bedocks Rock and its primitive rock monolithic carving would have been on another island with high probability. The sandy area and other low salt pan areas nearly all the way to town along is a sign of Oceanic sea level rise, turning once viable land for Aboriginal tribes that survived on megafauna to a coastal existence over time. The shocks were slowly absorbed where at a basic level it wasn't even noticed by the individuals at all.

Flagstaff hummock is all soil marker stones all down to the other ancient artifacts it is hard to imagine the amount of tool work and why there is so much sediment, how many millions of years ?

Coastal Corkwood or batwing coral tree a remnant left remaining after subdivision of once eucalyptus woodland.

Solitary coral mixed with Fenstilena coral from the Tertiary period some 65 million years back

Hexigonia Coral

Solitary corals joined together.

Class Anthrozoa, Subclass Zoantharia, Order Sceleractina , Genus Thamnsteria
Jurassic to Cretaceous

Fenstilena Coral

Scleractinian coral, Brain Coral.

Colonial Coral attached to Rugose Solitary Coral both Silurian to Lower carboniferous period

Rugose Solitary coral evolved in the Devonian and went extinct around 65 million years ago.

Colonial coral, Monotastrea species

Solitary corals joined together
http://coral.aims.gov.au/factsheet.jsp?speciesCode=0339

Bryzoan Stemmed coral

Masteopora Coral

Colonial Coral, Monotastrea annularis .

Colonial Species Devonian / Permian and extinct at the beginning of the Cretaceous period .

Fenstelena Coral

These two colonial corals have the definable artifact rough knife and axe shapes which has to be that they were already stone at the time of the Aboriginal habitation.

The above shells are shards of Eurydesma which would have gone extinct in the Tertiary Period so one could then classify the latter coral species as Tertiary.

Typical Lamp shell an articulated Brachipodia design.

Left top < Cats eyes turban, Silver Kelp shell ( Bankivia fasciata ) Common periwinkle (Austrocochlea constricta), Common Oyster
( Saxostrea commercialis ), Tessellated cone ( conus tessulatus ),
Eyed Cowry ( Cypraea argus), Red Cowry ( Cypraea helvola), Murex Pecten, Large oyster, Helmut shell, left middle Cats eye periwinkle, various Bivalve mollusks along bottom. Some of these one could date tertiary and others more recent as with the collection below.

Golden lipped Oyster ( Pinctada maxima )

From top left The Prickly Purple (Thias Echinata ) ,
Marble cone ( Conus marmoreus) , Giant Clam
( Tridacna gigas), Spider shell ( Lambis scorpus), LH branched Murex ( Chicoreus ramosus ), center Exquisite Harp
( Austroharpa puncttata ), Cat's eye welk, Difstaff Spindle ( Fusinus cotus ).

Trochus maculatus upper right, Left, Winding Star Volema ( Volegalea wardiana ) reef whelk, Queen Scallop( Equichlamys bifrons ) lower right.

Marbled Volute Cymbiolista hunteri, and Tiger Cowry Cypraea tigris.

Chambered Nautalis ( Nautilus pompilius)

Cephalopod other species a squid octopus and cuttlefish, The Nautilus is a bottom feeder preys on crabs other small shellfish and can be lured into traps set among reef and rocks.

Warty ear Shell or Abalone ( Notohaliotis ruber )

Varied Ear shell abalone ( Haliotis varia )

Razor Oyster shell

Any of large collection of different Molluscan shells would have been source of food for coastal Aboriginal people and most likely used as items in everyday life, and trade economy item's to barter with inland people's. The rivers were considered primary trading points for most tribes and temporary barriers between others much as were the steep mountain ranges only the strongest and bravest of hunters ventured to confront their inland cousins but for time's of ceremony and trade and this was forward messages by painted people carrying etched message sticks.

The Aboriginal artifact display Bowen Museum.

These two photographs are of Aboriginal fish traps the rocks were carried a long distance from shore and put in these patterns to trap the fish on the outgoing tide. These areas probably don't exist anymore my Father took these photographs many years before the Abbott point coal port was built so now a days could be just dredge waste somewhere on the reef .

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2015/little-foot-given-new-age-of-3-67-million-years

This link leads to many a possibilities of now being a series of close to travel between islands that formed a land bridge all away from Africa to Australia or rather long coast lines of people everywhere with it now all under water how will we really ever really know even of America they have found submerged indian buildings a long way of the coast.

http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10891/jones-dgp-8-2.pdf

http://geology.uprm.edu/Morelock/patterns.htm

http://www.ga.gov.au/corporate_data/25187/Rec1996_036.pdf

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2015/geologists-date-ethiopian-jaw-to-circa-2-8-million-years-from-volcanic-ash-layers

http://www.murrayriver.com.au/about-the-murray/murray-river-aboriginals/

http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/07/04/4039235.htm

http://australianmuseum.net.au/explore-indigenous-australian-objects

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/land/aboriginal-scarred-trees#axzz3e3aVKibs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowen,_Queensland

some brief evidence set by scientist of mans history not all I would agree with but a set public standard.

4 million year ago earliest human ancestors had been recorded in Africa going on fossils found 1.5 million hears later evidence of humans first using fire. 100,000 years ago modern man existed in Africa and Asia. The first Australians arrive in Australia 50,000 years ago and make their way across the country to the southeast by 40,000 years. First Ochre was used as bodily decoration 32,000 years ago and evidence of Ceremonial funerary rites being used at lake Mungo.

http://www.janesoceania.com/australia_aborigines_lifeanddeath_lakemungo/index1.htm

http://nma.gov.au/blogs/education/2012/06/01/new-lake-mungo-education-resource/

Neanderthals have disappeared from Europe 30,000years ago and only modern man remains.

23,000 years ago the sea had receded and first people's had reached Tasmania, the whole continent is sparsely populated. 20,000 years in the Northern hemisphere people start to move into North America. 18,000 years the ice age is at it coldest and most of Tasmania is cover with ice and there are small glaciers in the Snowy Mountains. Tasmania becomes an Island again at 13,000 years Aboriginal people were using Boomerangs and in the Middle east Agriculture is first practised and animals domesticated. Sea levels rose between 800 and 900 years ago separating kangaroo Island and New Guinea from the Australian main land. in the northern Hemisphere Britain becomes and island and the Bering straight is opened up and people in Asia start to use metals as tools.

Around 5000 and 6000 years ago the first wheel was used in Mesoptamia , large cities were built and people used the alphabet to write. In Australia the Diptrotodon was becoming extinct 4000 years ago evidence of Dingo arriving in Australia. Aboriginal were using finely finished lightweight tools.

3000 years ago southern Tasmanian Aboriginal people were using paper bark boats for seal hunting, use of hooks and lines . Back in the northern Hemisphere they had built the Pyramids made Iron tools and weapons and built the Great wall of China by 2000 years. 2016 years ago Jesus Christ is born, Australian climate is bit similar to todays but probably wetter, probably never seen so many drought till the arrival of white man. 1600 years ago Europe is over run by the barbarian Huns and down south the 200 year later the Maoris had reached new Zealand . In Australia in Victoria Aboriginal people were building stone house in small towns and farming eels.

Evidence of Indonesian fisherman reaching the coast lines up north some 500 years , Columbus discover America some fifty years later Dutch sailors reach the western coast of Australia.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tasman-abel-janszoon-2716

Abel Tasman maps the east coast of Australia. then year.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cook-james-1917

1770 captain James Cook arrives sails up the east coast of Australia.

1788 the first fleet arrives.

http://www.australianhistoryresearch.info/the-first-fleet/

http://www.historyaustralia.org.au/ifhaa/ships/1stfleet.htm

Origins

2012-02-14T22:03:00.001-08:00

Long have gone are the Old ways and Traditions we must move on using the past as reference to better the decisions of the Future.

I am a practising self taught Paleontologist and Archaeologist, My achieved endorsements on http://www.linkedin.com/profile/preview?locale=en_US&trk=prof-0-sb-preview-primary-button
must mean that I have most things right with my Research and Collections.
Link to my Book Australia an Ancient Past< covering all blogs with Highlighted word links to all subjects

Click on picture.

I find a definite correlation between megafauna sub fossils and the presence of Early Aboriginal cave man both in Port Alma and Mt Morgan. Their sub fossils and mega fauna and their artifacts exist in peat Bogs of Port Alma and both ancient human sub fossils of some similar megafauna species exist in the sediments of Dee river Mt Morgan. Most other sites I have explored besides Port Alma and Dee river all have evidence of Paleozoic fossils as part of decoration or the item in general. Most sites of recent disturbance exposure are much primitive artifacts like large axes and scrapers though Mt Morgan has some fine more intricate spears and marbles these areas are to me to be of late Pleistocene time of megafauna.
https://theconversation.com/aboriginal-australians-co-existed-with-the-megafauna-for-at-least-17-000-years-70589?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2012%202017%20-%206465&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20January%2012%202017%20-%206465%20CID_ad39719435f2ed29d40de074f21559b0&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Aboriginal%20Australians%20co-existed%20with%20the%20megafauna%20for%20at%20least%2017000%20years&fbclid=IwAR0oOUWCaGBBK5i-2RYqhNhSkv1KNXKBRdocNesE8xonca4nIeApLQaEzsg
Scientist confirm Aboriginal people live in village type stuations.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/09/australia.barbaramcmahon
Colonialist always have preached that the Aboriginal was a chiefly a nomadic people which I believe was some self justification to deny the land ownership for pursuit of mining and grazing .
This is far from the truth they lived in small communities with stones marking all areas which either gender were not allowed like ceremony places. First settlers only saw the rocks as a resource for building had no idea of their significance in the Life and Religious cerimonies of the first people's.

Most other excavations around Australia show that hafting technology was only introduced some some 5000 years ago, before then it was more of making stones into scrapers and graver's for the sharpening of spear points.

A core rock as Archaeologist would say it has been used to take small sharp blade of each side.
This type of quality shale and good red shale's is rare in the Dee river rocks of metamorphosed Devonian mud stone sediments this would have been remnants of an ancient Brachipodia fossil at one stage, it still has part of the notable flat side of cast fossil.

One can work out simple now, the right angle cutting in the rocks as in rock far left it is definitely suited a large club of pick with handle . One can only assume that maybe the game they were hunting was very large and needed a large tool to bring down.
In Paleolithic material terms, the Aboriginal was more impoverished than his northern European cousins; there was no horned or tusked material flint and similar-grained rocks were rare. Quartz and quartzite type rocks were abundant but knapping them to produce any sort of ornamental artifact was rare. One can assume what was simple and worked suited the job good enough. Maybe the energies were spent carving other rock Ornaments like marker stones and round ceremonial stones. Some of the larger Marker stones would have had to have much more organisation as a people other than the tribes that were there when settlers first arrived. To get such scale of organised thinking the Race of People would have been much larger and more organised.

Evidence of this finest percussion cutting is found among shale and quartzite round the Dee river rocks like this usually has an edge where the last couple chip offs were made. large number of perfectly triangle rectangular and square rocks are never formed by random hitting in any erosion rounded surfaces from rolling only.
Northern territory aboriginals of some areas did do a good effort as shown in next photograph.

Collection of artifacts from the Northern Territory. items received with inheritance from family member one Adventurous Explorer my Uncle David.
The Mine cleaned up large areas of the Dee river here in the once Gold mining town of Mt Morgan two meters of polluted over burden down was removed past the coal and 1900 period glass sedimentation layers in the banks. Areas of parts of the old Township where Aboriginals lived near the railway was exposed after only a half a meters of soil removal evidence of glass made artifacts were exposed. Two floods bought more erosion exposing more mega fauna and Aboriginal artifacts from upstream with only hope of finding lighter items caught upon the slower part of flow of any river the outside after any rain event. Now it has been turned over too much to ever do a successful excavation but surface specking is still fine after heavy rains for some artifacts one has recently found the Diprotodon atlas vertebra and some nice ancient coral. The lighter smaller artifacts get ripped away with each flood as they are obvious the lighter of objects other than the sand moving further downstream some sub fossil bones are only found in the sand area's now but have found some caught behind a rocks and debris.
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This collection of rocks are all been cut some straight edges so many angles nothing that normal river erosion would have done. Eroded rocks are rounded and smoothed edged most of these are pointed to sharp edged. This is not the original bottom of the river this is the 2 meters of rocks and gravels from up stream that has moved downstream seeing that's what gravity and water flow do when the subsequently original stream bottom is removed.
My first collection of artifacts and bones comes from under most of this overburden which now mixed with rubbish from the early and recent township. But after rain one can be lucky to find the fine made mouth tools or the odd bit of ancient bone. One is always now wishing some flood event for a decent find. Only problem with flood events one has to move his search further downstream as all the small and lighter objects are moving the direction faster.

One has always noticed many stones cut to some specific shape with the fossils being used in a feature of it's design and wondered if these were toys that were given to the children like dolls some do have some sort of facial recognition in the design or animal like the one left looks like a platypus shape.

Even has the possibility of being a club stone of someone of importance like the Rain Maker

These are also fossil evidence of ancient times right one a 450 million year old sponge similar to Port Alma and being used to enhance the appearance of the item.

Rocks were carved to represennt animals of the persons totem.

These seem to be from of an age of enlightment where perfection was part of the artifact making procedure, this I call much organised creative activity which seems to be irrevant in the tribes that inhabited the land when settlers arrived . Creativity as an individual was frowned upon as the Elders who controled the Laws set down, one had to operate as a collective unit for survival of the tribe in harsh conditions of the day, so say all recent antropology studies I have read about.

These could be a mix of resin and clay but time even makes resin no longer waterproof as they do readily dissolve after time in water.
Hence my belief that this area of river now was not back in the past. I have kept a large collection of these for some future scientific analysis finding a Heritage interested Scientist is such a difficult thing in a day when all people can think about is Gold above knowledge. None of these type objects can ever be found now due to all the floods as they were the first things destroyed by just heavy rain, evcavation after the Government cleaning was the only way I got these.
Ion Idress documents a lot of information about children toys in the Living Stoneage dolls that were created out of cooked clay and painted with ochre maybe that is the answer to the structures though Aboriginal people didn't ever create pottery as any records show toys and decorations for ceremony. Children were all very inventive they made a wheel which they pushed around with a stick and a scooter type play item used to skid around on mud flats like skiers. Balls were common pay items Ion's observations were most Aboriginal children preferred to go around with a small spear practising their throwing skills.
Australian rules Football has it origins in the Aboriginal game of Marngrook played by the Gunditjamara people of Western Victoria. they played the game with a stitched up possum or kangaroo bag stuffed with charcoal and the highest leaper to grasp it got he highest marks.
Elders were always edging a dare as were the children as they grew up like who could climb the tree the fastest, duelling, ball games of throwing a skin coated rock at each other and practising to get out of the road fast was a Kalkadoon game. wrestling, swimming competitions, under water swimming contest, endurance of pain and memory test.
Sometime they would go above what their parents or elders would advise like who was game to slide down the huge crocodile slide. All skills needed to survive in the harsh environment and grow up strong fast warriors practise was important, during Ceremonial piercing and other Initiation ceremonies one had to be strong and not flinch or cry or else one would wear the weakness of character all of ones life.
The Children also learn for stories of heroic warriors and women with hero status that had sacrificed their lives to save their children from the bite of a snake or the jaws of a crocodile. the story of the tribe walking through the desert in time of bad drought and surviving to find fertile grounds. Such deeds were made into Corroborees to be sung and thus emulated and to be remembered for generations.
With the camp fires burning all of the day the children helped in some wood collecting chores carrying item's of the hunt for mother in the afternoons played games around with some tree's seeds making them float and twist in the thermals of the smoke.
Children copied the adults with body scarring and tattoo's of things of nature like leaves and flowers was done with a lot of sharpened hot sticks and a small fire patterns were burnt in by another child and cool ash was rubbed in, scarring each other with stone knives then rubbing with ash was common ones appearance to be strong and put up with pain without a flinch was the sign of a brave warrior.
Young girls of eight would be held down by their mother who would have a ranting ceremony comparing her breast to the fruits of a tree becoming ripe and would put two cuts from breast to breast with a stone or shell knife this was treated with ash of acacia and emu fat oil these magic cuts were to urge the inner life of her breast to quicken and swell happily. Other cuts were performed across the stomach of lot of the women of the western tribes it was best to look strong for her strong warrior.
Fear was never shown in the ceremony to the sight of the knife and the Ion Idress wonder in his studies if it was all lost in the haze and daze of rhythmic music and dance to self hypnosis.
Self and assisted ritual scarring was in a sort of meaning as civilised societies men go to acquire medals one carried a lots of ornamental scarring as proof they are strongest.
Only one type of fear could be shown without shame and that was the fear of the supernatural, this took on a few forms from that of the Anger

After the first removal of overburden from the Dee river by the State Government Department people DERM which was a bit over two meters down than the original in a few fine sediment areas I found uncovered had numerous bits of bones with the cooked clay like structures only a couple burnt pieces of bone were found and the others were all carved the shape they are in which does not really indicate a place of eating or even burial more like a residential area or camp site where people sat around and told stories about the ornaments they had. It seems to be a deep patch of sand near rocks could this have been sand near a river the fact that water destroys the burn clay items doesn't allow
It's sound feasible to me if the parent is busy trying to dig yams and the child needs some distraction to keep the child quiet, a stone or carved bone with a face design of fossil or carved representation would act a toy.
The Coastal Aboriginal race didn't spent too much time on food collection or even spear making perfection it was hot most of the day and time was spent socialising, children played and the Elders had their Ceremonies be it for rain or initiation or the sake of just having a party, even the children and women played their own ceremonies while the men were of at their sacred grounds. There was only a constant need to go collect food and water in the harshest of time's for the West of the Dividing range where less vegetation grew. Coastal peoples really had a larger more diverse variety of foods to the drier western areas so were able to store grains and smoked fish to vegetables. Coastal tribes used the water ways at trading zones where one was free to travel with good for trade. Usually some decorated warriors went ahead as people to announce the news in their decorated dressage they were not threatened by the other tribes and treated with respect of as important messengers of the Elders. Western Tribes still were very organised to hunt in the cool of the mornings and the rest of the day might be spent if not in ceremony then catching fish at the permanent water holes which were a meeting place for all the tribes in the area very much a sacred neutral ground.
There was not this we eat all of food at once attitude as most Early settlers thought there was not any real studies into their lifestyle habits because the land was more valuable than lives of some person that resembled a savage.
One has discovered lots of areas with Artifacts around Mt Morgan township, areas around the Range behind the mine, behind Range area at Boulder creek, down south to Bajool, Marmor, Gladstone Shale Oil area, and a Couple of Bowen spots and find same design in marker stones and tools used by the tribes of Aboriginal people in all locations.

Large stones like above would have to be some sort of grinding stones or ceremonial stones one could not imagine swinging something like this in a club.
The marker stones are large heavy items such as the rocks that would have been the head of a club though a lot have a large club shape. This let me to believe this was much more of a large Civilisation of a robust people up to 7ft some of these items would have required a lot of strength and mutual co-operation to create.
Mass mutual co-operation on a large scale should be looked at as a civilisation, but lack of studies by even present day Heritage Museum people is just snobby intellectual laziness.
A description of the Kalkadoons at first contact with Europeans
Ye Primal tribes, Lords of this old domain,
Swift footed hunters of the pathless plain,
Unshackled wanders, enthusiasts free,
Pure native sons of savage liberty,
W. C. Wentworth Australasia 1823.
Kalkadoon western Queensland tribe men were large people would not think that was just an isolated pocket of evolution even especially with the harsher conditions than the coastal tribes.
With sometime just enough food resources survival of the strongest and the fittest built a much larger man than the coast

One could think this as a rough Club stone or a core stone small sharp blades were chipped off.
Large areas of rocky ground now unerathed by mining and agricultural clearing shows large tool marking factory area's
This real co-operation must be a sign of Central Governance and Organisation more than what first settlers had ever realised.
Some of the areas in the mountain ranges have various granite Long rocks, my assumption is that these site's must have been occupied by Aboriginal tribes much longer before the first white settlers as these are barren dry places now with little places of permanent water and would only been a place of hunting not habitation. It doesn't always mean the hilly country was this way always though as Cattlemen and miner has changed the landscape, climate so much with extensive clearing and reshaping the land with their bulldozer's lots of small springs would have dried and disappeared altogether.

Most Aboriginal tribes because of their size relied on a reasonable supply of fresh water some tribes populations in a small group ranged from 50 people to 500 people.

These lands part of the inner dividing range Mt Morgan spur may look untouched but that is not so except for the odd grass tree and Cycad, the tree's are all regrowth one can walk among the now existing tree's and find introduced species everywhere and some remnant stumps of once larger tree's and the odd miners claim post in the middle of nowhere.
Further over in the range beyod the area I would find 1800 glass pieces up a hill among the lage gums and grasstree's on has found this structure.

As the doorway faces the valley that has never been cleared except maybe some large gums one can assume it was used to prop large gum branches from each corner with parrell braches tied part way up to rest Iron bark Eucalyptus strips against with a fire at the door in the winter time would ahave assured good heat distribution and the rocks some protection from the winds which seem noisy on a lot of days among these hills.

My art impresion of the Gunyah

A solitary rocky out crop with many marker stones is nearby woul also be a sourse of tool making material for mainly axes and hammer stones.

In good times large sanils would have provided some protien sustenance for the women to collect.

Grasstree resin was not only for personal use in spear and tool, toy manufacture , but a trading item with the Tribes on the lower lands. Water woould have been a problem the Dee river is some five miles away.

A lot of Gums with sap that was medicinal for cuts and wounds or cerimonial healing.

Iron Wood wattle Acacia Liguata, seed a sourse of food among the gums with smaller wattles.

Acacia Littorallis a tree that provide kilos of edible seed for a protien cake to be cooked on hot flat rocks. It grows all around the river and mountians in large amounts .

The Thorny devil Lizard seems to be in plentiful supply around the rock hills so then were the goanna's which have died out due to intrduction of feral foxes and cats.

Down towards the Dee river is still thick Lemon scented, Peppermint, Iorn bark and blood wood gums a likely habitat of Koala's at one time as these are all the type of gums it ate,

Cycad Plants grow always some kilometre away from the grasstree's one has never seen them growing together anywhere yet and questions why? The flesh had to be scrapped of the seed before cracking to remove the kernal. It was pounded into a paste that was washed for 2 to 3 days in a flowing steam in dilly bags. Then pre cooked in the morning before noon as it fermented fast on hot rocks wrapped in bark under the dirt.
The cake was then kept for journeys to cerimonies and had to be pounded into paste again before bakiing as cakes on hot rocks. some warriors ate just the first cooked cake during iniation cerimonies which made the weak and hallucinate but never real sick.
The Prehistory of Australia ended in 1788 when British colonist moved themselves and gangs of convicts to the first Settlement New South Wales it just took till the late 1800's for full detribalisation when most tribes were forced to rely on some sort of assistance from the Settler as their lands had be scourged from most of their food to survive as a tribe.

In 1788 Australia was inhabited by at least 500 hundred tribes which by some estimates total population was some 300,000 people. In coastal or river valley their density was probably pretty high one to two individuals every square mile , elsewhere immense tracts supported no more than one person every 30 miles. Some coastal tribes measured from 500 to 2000 people and inland tribes like the Kalkadoons were some 1500 in number.
Over the entire country the Aboriginal hunted, fished and gathered food run some small trade between tribes in artifacts and food. There is no records of any agriculture but there obviously at most time's enough root crops and fruits growing naturally to supply their nutrition needs. The extent of Nomadism depended on the availability of food and was probably more a reality to tribes on poorer rainfall areas west of the mountain ranges.

The food processing implements and other weapons for hunting would have made some tribal communities moving however difficult and was only required necessary in bad conditions of drought would they walk away from their camp and on any long march to greener pastures. The ill and weak fell by the side could request to be clubbed to death or remain and suffer the elements. Early European studies of Aboriginal people were very limited and reports usually say small scattered tribes and these reports were done after they had been and decimated the tribes with their disease and small patches of genocidal killings.
European relations with Aboriginals before 1870 was a wild and wicked.
Quote -When the white man came to Australia the Aboriginal had very definite systems of morals and values.They found these systems treated with contempt by the newcomers. Obviously more powerful, these newcomers could destroy the existing structure, even when they had little interest in substituting their own for it. W. C Wentworth.

For Aborigines the land is a spiritual phenomenon a place from which Culture and Religion derive, Sun Water Animals and Earth had no fences it was for the collective use of all. There were tribal border usually separated by rivers and ranges but there was readily communication between most tribes. Tribes communicated to each other with Messengers with carved sticks before any Trading or Ceremonies were held. The painted messengers were allowed to freely travel tribal borders as their only purpose was delivery of good news. The most important of all Ceremonies was the bora they celebrated the great Father spirit known as Baiame who with with his son Dhurramulan
( Names given in Victoria were central to all Aboriginal Mythology just names varied for the spirit ancestors some other tribal area's .
According to Mytholoy Baiame created the first bora , he is given credit to shaping the world and giving laws to his people. He is the sky spirit who was on earth during creation but returned to the sky. His son Dhurramulan spirit enter the tree's and the voice of the Sky Spirit could only be heard in the sound of the noise of the Bullroarer carved out of the tree. It was only bought out in initiation ceremonies for the younger men. the bora stone ring circles were sanctuary from evil spirits during such ceremonies.
Important men warriors of elder had their graves beside tree's and usually inscription of their lives engraved into the tree's.
The land was the Mother to them special significance extended far beyond the mere supply of food and water, Myth, Religion, Dance and Song were associated with features of the landscape to which they belonged, this meant the past and future were all linked to give meaning to their present.

The tree was the ancestor spirit people so there was sacred the Tribe's survival.
Land is a Spiritual thing that could not be bought or sold, land is not private property and it is endowed with magic of sun and the water with animals to provide life for the collective use of all.
The notion that fence were built to separate portions of land was defacing to them.
There were two groups of settlers one that determined the justice served out to the Aboriginal and usually the boundaries were recognised although not fenced, a trespasser could be in danger of attack.
The Aboriginal hunting economy and the Squatter pastoral economy could not coexist and groups of Aborigines resisted the intruder with violence when the settlers stock were destroying their food resources.

One group of settlers held the opinion that Aborigines were not entitled to be looked on as fellow creatures and consequently adopted the cruelest and harshest treatment to them. The second group viewing with horror, the inroads made into the possessions of the natives, spoke of the colonist humanitarian duties to their ignorant but innocent brothers. there is ample evidence to substantiate Bartlett's observation of the conflicting colonial attitudes towards the Aborigines. #Kalkadoons.
Missionaries were encouraged by the Colonial Government and many tried to do the right thing as in their mind treating Aboriginal people with some humanity some success were achieved but there were also faults.
Roman Catholic missions were set up on Stradbroke Island at Dunwich to teach trade crafts as well as religion but this attempt ended in failure not long after in 1847.
In 1838 eleven Evangelical Lutheran missionaries arrived at Humpty Bong but Aboriginal people were difficult to control so they moved to what is now Nundah to a 640 acre Government allotted block where genuine attempts were made to instruct the aborigines in their camps among the bush in Agriculture and other civilised ways of the missionaries and even taught the Aboriginal child the 3 r's in school room situation with the white children and found them to be quick of at learning as the latter. The Missionaries thought the children would be better separated from the parents as the Parents were considered to have evil ways with their still primitive ideal's and uncomfortable with any sudden change. This bought animosity and there were constant attacks from warrior hordes, so the mission closed in 1845.

The first account of Native Police occurs in correspondence form Sir George Gipps to Lord Stanley dated Sydney 21 March 1844.
The first attempt to set up a Native police Corps was in 1836 to 1837 but it was a failure and abandoned.
The Committee of the 1861 Enquiry reported all attempts to Christianise the Aboriginals had failed. A couple Lutheran Missionaries in Queensland gave evidence that the mission had been a failure and not one Aborigine was converted during the seven years between 1838 to 1846.
The Queensland's Governments role in finding a solution to the frontier problem was negative and any positive attempts came only from private individuals but sometimes the trust was just not enough and exploited by the odd rogue element. But whole tribes suffered for the mistake or rebellion of a few.
Spenser Wills of a pastoral holding near the Nogoa river Central Queensland grew to trust the aboriginal people and left his arms in his tent and none were given to any of the workers but some attack by a unknown tribe left 19 of them dead, reprisals were quickly carried out and 30 were killed in their camp by Police and the Native corps. Some more were killed latter and other driven up a hill where it was reported they had jumped off.

The vigorous reprisals made by the Native troopers force against the Nogoa Tribes made the Squatter more confident of their status.
The Aborigine could not fine refuge in the British System of Law where all land was considered Crown land. The settler who paid his fee for the use of the land to the Lands Department considered the Aborigine as an intruder. The law also treated the Aborigine as a British subject, this meant resistance had to be within the boundaries of the law but in the terms of Settlers Law and morality the Aborigine appeared to most people as the feckless savage and could never be civilised to European standards.

The Methods applied by the Native Troopers in the reprisals could come into question the Chief officer had very little control over the troopers in any dispersal and the native troopers were known to remove the shirts of their uniforms and enter the bush with only carbines and bullets. Thus when stripped there was very little difference between the native troopers and the fleeing aboriginal people and after the main camps were attacked the
Sub-Inspector lost sight of his troopers till they returned out of the bush later after hunting down remaining peoples of the tribes.

The New South Wales government revived the Native troopers in 1842 and young Aboriginal men attracted to the uniform and the chance to ride a horse.
The Government used them under supervision to hunt and apprehend suspect Aboriginal criminals and were also to give security to the squatters as they overtook the lands from other tribes. It was customary to use the Aboriginal police corps men from one tribe to be sent and made to work in a enemy or rival tribes territory, this guaranteed much harsher treatment to be handed out.
It was the duty of the Native troopers at all time to disband large groups of Aboriginals such as meetings there fore meaning Ceremonies also. The Officers would therefore see the necessity of teaching the Aboriginal people that no outrage or serious crime would be committed without impunity retributive Justice shall speedily follow any commission of a crime most time's leading to killing their fellow tribal members .
Also one of the reasons troopers were consigned to areas away from their home tribal grounds.
This led to a lot of indiscretion and self appointing by the Sub-Inspector in the interpretation of the terms Aboriginal crime, retributive justice and dispersal. When the dispersal lead to mass slaughter or just a murderous raid no one knew except the Sub Inspector.

The Officer usually a Sub Inspector was Law to himself as he patrolled the Queensland frontier, he had control of a contingent of native troopers who were handpicked and strictly controlled. Evidence from the Aborigines who were being repressed was inadmissible even with a lot of mistaken identities as they were considered the ones doing the depredations and assaults and any report from the troopers also was not treated as evidence due to the fact they were Aboriginal and could be sympathetic to their own.

This is a document one downloaded from the net one didn't realise the extent of the atrocities just way to many to research and write about really.
The Native troopers were shrouded in secrecy, Sub Inspectors were trained to be discrete in handling of messages between his troopers and not letting any outsiders or person not connected to the native Police ever interfere with the works of the troopers , accompany them or give orders of any kind. The Sub Inspectors would hardly forward reports to the Commissioner that would incriminate themselves with any wrong doings among his detachment. Some 'white' opinion was critical of the Native Police The Queenslander commented in 1880 that how many in the colony knew the meaning of the word dispersal. If as a Colony we should indulge in the wholesale murder at rate lets us have courage in our opinions and murder openingly not deliberately and call it murder.

A dispersal was in fact a cover word for indiscriminate killing rap and child braining. Most times the dispersal was on grounds that were highly doubtful. I don't think they can understand anything but shooting them Says a Lieutenant Wheeler and he further asserted he would waste no time seeing if a bullock had been speared or not.
Because the native Police had experience with firearms they were given jobs as guards on expeditions by prominent people and escort duties to a lot of miners in the North Queensland and gold exports out of the north. They helped facilitate the over land telegraph in the north west and cape York as Aboriginal people were stealing the wire to make spears points for fishing and the insulators for spear heads for hunting large game.
They were to guard the cane farmers of the North against attack and the Stockman from loosing his herds, the Native Police in some ways did contribute to the well being and development of the colony of Queensland. By the 1890's most southern European settlers had their Stations well established and Aboriginals were kept on some in slave conditions as they were force out of the bush by starvation to more abuse and harsh treatment by a lot of the station owners who kept them on rations like some sort of slave.
The first Colonial Government of Queensland decided to legalise and retain the existence of the native Police in 1863 as the Squatters resisted the disbanding of the Corps. There were other alternative given one was the British forces could be deployed in the frontier, another was a European troopers assisted only with trackers. The Squatters opposed the abolition of the native police because they had limited the attacks on some of the runs in areas patrolled in New South Wales.

The Pastoralists of Queensland were worried as the Aboriginals were not respondent to civilised ways and European charity and were know to return to their tribal ways .
The non acceptance of Aboriginal evidence in a Court of Law was supported on the grounds that the Aborigines as a race were given to the worst forms of lying and treachery many trumped up charges were dealt with in the courts of black men raping the squatters women. some squatters such as Ewen MacKenzie of Kilcoy station was know to be handy with strychnine in the flour.
Not all squatters were harsh on the Aboriginal people there were many that sympathised with their plight of starvation on their lands and demanded the Government provide rations and work for these people, like Haley of Kingaroy and O'Connell of the Burnett district in 1860's, however the squatters voice was only a minority and went tragically not listened too.
Native troopers were enlisted for a certain period and were not expected to leave before the end of their term. There were many deserters and most were hunted down and killed though it was customary to just have them listed as missing in any reports given to the Government. After a period of five years they were usually sent back to their tribal area's but if they were considered good they could be signed up for an extra 5 years some 10 with a special bonus. Northern tribe men were cohered with grog and tobacco to leave their tribes and join the corps. They enlisted as cadets and with training weaned out who was good and not, those not were expelled from the force back to their tribe to be rejected by other tribal members. Many reach the ranks of Officer and Lieutenant but they were responsible for their own discipline and many were attracted to drinking in excess some ended up in other confrontations with members of rival tribes while others suffered severe alcoholic illness's.

Pictures, Kalkadoons , Robert EM Armstrong. As Queensland grew as a colony the Aborigine were pushed to the out skirts of the townships and cities to scrounge on the dumps and waste. Some were adequately employed in the sugar producing area's but provide some with an income led to severe alcoholic addictions and work was often missed.
Tragically out of ignorance Aboriginal people were killed as a sport, Dame Mary Gilmour recalls how as a young girl she was staying on her Grandmother's property when she saw a hunter from an unsuccessful rabbiting expedition come upon an Aboriginal man and his wife bathing he raised his gun and shot the woman then when the Aboriginal man went to his wife aid he was also shot. How many Aboriginal people were shot this way no one would ever have known. Most clashes between Settlers and Aborigines seen the Aboriginal pushed to the other boundaries of his survival frontier.
In early Aboriginal and European history it was not the Christian missionary that first came in contact with the Aborigines it was his dis-possessors, the squatters and their men. These men on the spot and doing most the killing and dispossessing of the Aborigines, were the most ready to deny any humanity.
The Squatters and the Aborigine were striking at each others economic nerve centre in a situation that could be described as economic warfare. The Aborigine of Queensland fought as their social and economic conditions allowed and was noted for some success's. Jacob Lowe stated that the killing of fourteen whites in the Goondiwindi district 1843/44 had given good reason to abandon the runs. Where the European settlement was scattered and the ridges and valley's provided enough sustenance for their hunter gatherer life style they were able to wage a war for at least ten years.
While frontier violence occupied the tabloids in the various colonial newspapers of the day, attacks upon settlers properties was serious and widespread.
The extent of the Aboriginal attacks was not fully appreciated by early historians. Aboriginal resistance would have been more effectual if they had some sort of main central organisation other than just inter tribal organisation which the Kalkadoon probably had the best of all with their armed fortresses.
The number of Europeans the Aboriginal killed was hard to ascertain, two North Queensland Historians H Reynolds and Dr N Loos did a thorough search of newspapers, other records and correspondence and come up with a figure of around 400 in Central and Southern Queensland during the thirty years from 1841 to early 1870's. Some 420 to 440 in Northern Queensland between the first settlement of Bowen and the passage of the Aboriginal Protection act in 1897 .
The attacks on the Settlers herd's were numerous and organised most times completely wiped out whole herds of cattle or runs of sheep . Sheep were more vulnerable than cattle they were scattered and killed in their thousands. McIntyre Aboriginals near the Maranoa speared 75 of Lowe's cattle in one night and eighty of the neighbours cattle the next. Two thousand head were taken after an attack on May downs Station in Central Queensland in 1866 , four thousand were driven from Lanmark Downs in 1867 while another two thousand was being driven of Fort Cooper North a month later.
Five thousand were run of Camboon Station over two days in 1858, while Corfield lost eight thousand in three attacks on his Wide Bay Station in 1850. Over a period of two months in 1870 one hundred cattle were speared on Hinchinbrook station. Those squatters that were lucky to escape such massive onslaughts were likely to suffer cumulative losses of stock from smaller forays on a regular basis. The cost of restocking was overheads that was expensive to the wealthy overseas investors of some of the larger stations and runs. In economic terms the Aboriginal was successful in creating some of the settler graziers to completely leave their runs from debts.
If only for more proper organisation and communication between groups of Aboriginal tribe's there would have been likely they could have succeeded in keeping the Squatters from the lands but the Native Trooper enlistment and dire communicable disease's intolerance had the cards stacked against that probability.

Queensland in 1860 was an isolated territory of 600,000 square miles, roads were only bush tracks where in some places bullock drays were only transport. During wet weather bullock drays didn't even get through the coast dirt tracks of the first highways. Bowen was established in 1861 under Dalrymple's leadership as it was an easy accessible deep water port for ships for squatters to ship of their sheep and cattle.
Selectors on the Don river in the first Township and Port Bowen petitioned the Queensland Parliament in 1872 complaining they had lost hundreds of bushels of maize in a single week and often the whole seasons stock was stolen. Farmers further north suffered raids out of hungry Aboriginal people out of the rain forest stealing whole crops of bananas maize and even sweet potatoes. Stealing as a crime to the Settler but according to ancient ritual of the Aboriginal that the food on the land belonged to all. There was a few attacks on settlers that were probably motivated by fear of the unknown. Usually most attacks were against the settler's food supplies or stock that was spreading feces in their water supplies. Townships were full of people that carried firearms as were Pastoralist, Shepherds, Miners and Prospectors. Squatters had just started their runs and very little fences were built and stock man had to rely on shepherds for their stock. Fear of Aboriginal attack made the job well paid and it was difficult to find applicants.
The lands Act of 1860 passed by the colonial Government gave Pastoralist secure tenure of 14 year lease's. But to stop speculator buying and selling as a profit the runs of a square mile had to be leased for a price of ten shillings and stocked for a year before the sale and as a result there was a large movement of stock on to runs.
The Port of Townsville was established as an enterprise in 1864 this lead to Settler movement west to the mineral rich areas of Cloncurry which was as far as to the Kalkadoon the land of their spirit as far as the eye could see.
In the Aboriginal beliefs and customs there was no migration from other lands the Aboriginal spirit had always been part of the land from when time began.
The Aboriginal people made numerous types of Boomerangs a fluted one a plain one and a hooked Boomerang. Boomerangs for hunting or fighting were made from the Gidyea tree Acacia cambagei, or Stinking wattle, found growing as dense shrubs long water courses and bordering gibber plains west of the great divide.
Shields were made out of corkwood decoration patterns were sometimes carved, burnt or painted on with red, yellow ochre and charcoal. Many other woods were used in different areas as the large shield I own are made of river red gum that had it origins in South Australia.
The design and manufacture of weapons was important more with Western tribes for portability and be multi-use items if one was nomadic it was good to be less burdened with items to carry that were necessary for day to day normal food collecting activities.
Like the Boomerang for example it was used hunting , fighting and also used for making the fire and keeping the coals in order for cooking the meal later used in recreational games. It had to be made out strong durable wood of the wattle the could afford some bashing around with very little damage. The design of the leaf shaped spear thrower or woomera (womerah) was such it could be used as a chisel, knife or an engraver and a receptacle for mixing ochre and bow for fire making beside it normal spear launching use. Clubs or Nula nula's were used not only as weapons but to throw at an animal for food one is more likely to hit the prey with a heavy ended stick than just to throw a stone, some clubs used the notch at the branching part of a tree to give a rounded bulbous look the hand end was sharp so if the heavy end did not connect the sharp end might spear the animal. The Lil Lil club was one shaped club with the shape of a wooden Axe it was used to hook around the shield and strike the opponent. some rounded head clubs were able to have a sharpened stick shoved in the rounded end to become some sort of sword.
A two handed sword was especially made in the Rockhampton district and was used to strike with the concave or convex edge. Swords were around ten to twelve centimetres in length made from a split slab of wood from a green tree and adzed down sharpened convex side with rounded ornamental handle with string to tie around wrist.
Swords were found to used in Northern Queensland around Tully river and Cardwell as some were collected by early settlers.
The Diaries of early settler usually comment on the activities of the childlike Aboriginal tribes living nearby on the edge of towns or those maintaining their camps on nearby properties. Some men who considered themselves intellectuals were interested in collecting the ornamental wooden artifacts as curiosities, a lot from early Victoria and New South Wales colonies were shipped back to Europe for Museum displays and there still remains till these days.

My nula nula and didgeridoo well no Boomerang it just didn't return.

The shield and Axe were Ceremonial items and not used in real battle's for that they always used inferior versions.or fighting poles made from the Gidyea wattle , Nula nula's or throwing sticks, clubs with rocks studded in end were used in battle and food collecting was good for throwing short distances and hitting at close quarters.

My Ceremonial Sword from somewhere in northern Queensland as I was told when receiving but exactly is really unknown and one thought it at first to be South Sea Islander in origin.
The tribe made numerous utensils, koolamons, wooden trays, (cher-to) , dilly bags ( ton-a ta), fish nets (wun-to) and emu nets (yu-pi) . They also made domestic implements and tools for primitive society they were pretty averse with their skills Native chisels, cementing substances waterbags, grindstones, narrdoo stones, baking ovens fire sticks and yam sticks, tribe's in Victoria used to have a eel farming and smoking business. Small cooperative fish trapping and selling was part of daily commercial trade along the Eastern Australian coast lines. As was the collection of shells and oysters which would be traded with the more inland tribes for items they had no real access on the coast Pituri the addictive chewing drug was one of these items. The trading routes were usually along the river systems with painted messengers always sent ahead to announce any arrivals. As in Morrill's reports of his stay with aboriginals in the Bowen area tribes were known to have large numbers of individuals up to 500 per group . This amount of people to live together self sufficient with the environment must have very organised structure and small economies from food to tool trading.
Many tool factories areas existed as not all areas especially coastal didn't had reasonable chert, quartz or granite to provide for all tribes some coastal tribes had to rely on more western tribe's for harder stone implements.
Mt Morgan Dee river was a principal place an earlier tribe as it has only been uncovered by recent mining activity. Bowen Pilot point or North heads Port Alma, have been exposed by rising sea level erosion and some of the areas down on farm areas have been cleared for stock exposing artifacts. I am sure that these recent exposures by farmers miners their erosion by digging up land have very little to do with recent tribal activity but that of some time lost from the late Pleistocene. The Pleistocene tribes can only be understood by their large marker stone production making them probably more organised than existing tribe's at time of settlement.

The stones were always important to all the ceremonies and the coming of the European with his ignorance destroyed many a sacred site collecting the rocks most with flat cut surfaces made ideal rocks for walls and foundations of their ever expanding buildings. One could say they were being offered another more comfortable lifestyle if only it was true as most seen their whole families die slowly from disease and the tribe's fragmented if not shot by the ever land hungry settler.
The influence of the Settlers in the cities and townships were given more powers in 1874 when the Legislative Assembly was enlarged with more minster's from regional areas some were considered more Liberal than previous ones giving the Aboriginal people the rights to settle on the outskirts of townships. This should not be seen as really a humanitarian type action even though a drought gripped the land , but one of the Farmer's greed sourcing cheap labour for the Sugar cane plantation harvesting.residents of Mackay were forward with a petition for the employment of Aboriginal people on cane farms.
The Governor in Council appointed in 1874 consisted of four Commissioners to examine how Aboriginal people could be employed more and make their labour available to the settlers and profitable to themselves. The Commissioners reported there was a decrease in the population of Aboriginal people due to the addition of alcohol despite Prohibition of sale to them.
They also reported some aboriginal people were gainfully employed successful but there was a majority that showed a complete aversion to any sort of persistent labour. There was an almost complete admission throughout the Colony not matter what hey did to do help the people they were doomed to early extinction.This was a very fatalistic view and the approach was to think that the only thing they could do to save the race was education of the children, one can guess that this is the idea that generated the stolen generations, this was a forced removal of the children from parents who were not deemed to be fit and proper parents under the European system of behaviour.

Aboriginal people believed that their Lives had Dreaming tracks which were interconnected with animals that each group in the tribe had animal totem. In dance rituals they would try to imitate their individual animal that had be set in time from creation by Tribal law of the ancestors. Then by totally taking the form by elaborate decoration of feathers ochre and flowers so all human form was lost.
The dance movements were to demonstrate the life of their spiritual animal totem. The decoration was such it took many hours to produce where flowers and feather down was stuck to an ochre painted body usually stuck with human blood and some sap of succulents. W.E Roths Ethnological studies among the North West Central Queensland Aborigines in 1897 recorded his observations of the Kalkadoon culture, tribal organisation, ritual recreation, travel trade and barter , the maintenance of law and order,disease , accidents and death, rainmaking, personal ornamentation, decoration domestic implements and utensils.
The Kalkadoons occupied a large tract of land in the Cloncurry Precambrian belt. the homeland was the Cloncurry ranges the waterholes along the rugged creeks and rivers that had their beginnings. To the east at the Selwyn range they met the Goa tribe, to the south Suliman Creek the Pita the north the O'Shanseey river and Seymour river border them from the Workobonga tribe and northeast Mitakoodi tribe.

The Selwny and Argylia ranges offer the Kalkadoons a refuge to retreat to long after the Pitta pitta and the Maitakoodi tribes had surrendered to the settler invasion. The ranges with their rugged nature had many narrow gorges that could easily be defended. The Kalkadoons had lots of arsenals of weapons stored in rocky Craig's and creeks if retreating to the area was essential for survival. This in itself was strategic military thinking making them truly much more aggressive than their coastal cousins.
The ecological life span of the Kalkadoon tribe was broken into two sections of land the estate the dreaming place the camp the ceremonial grounds and the range the hunting and foraging area, usually the range merged with neighbouring tribes in the hunting for food and each tribe respected the other hunters and food gatherers.
The Kalkadoons were a warrior tribe independent, aggressive and people usually commented on their physique as being larger than any coastal Aboriginals.

White Hill's owner Mrs Burke noted they were over 6 foot high and broad shouldered strong looking very fearsome looking men. Only four permanent water holes existed on their estate land and this was important to them mainly health reasons.
Settlers cattle were seen a treat to the health of the tribe adding feces to the water making it undrinkable this could have been the main reason for much hostilities.
The tribes depended on them for camp water and many of the killing that were in the early settling of the land were around these water holes. The Kalkadoon seen the settlers cattle as a threat to their existence as a tribal unit and had some organisation between the Warriors and Elders in the monitoring of the Settlers entering their lands. There were only limited water and their various forms of edible grass seeds, fruits berries and peas were all under threat from settlers stock, the Settlers guns were frightening the Birds and Kangaroos having a detriment result on the source of protein
It then can be said threat the Kalkadoon society was on the verge of European invasion as the tribes had arsenals well stocked with weapons. The rocky outcrops were the tool factories and acted as barricades. Their society lacked strong centralised leadership to coordinate it's manpower and resources to confront the invader but it's warrior qualities enabled it to resist the invader much longer than other tribes. The conflict can be seen not only as a conflict between Aboriginal and settler but one between two societies with conflicting values and cultural standards.

In December 1878 a man named Molvo with Stockman , a Campman and a Bullock driver moved up from the small township of Boulia to a waterhole on the Sulieman creek with intention of occupying two block of it with an awesome water hole .
Little did he know this was Kalkadoon sacred land the story is that the men went for a swim in the creek to cool of and the undergrowth of the creek hid a Kalkadoon war party armed with spears and Nulla Nullas. All of the Settlers were killed and were later found by a native boy from Stanbrook station and when the alarm was given the Kalkadoon warriors were excited and raided cattle on other station spearing some mortally others injured running madly round the bush with spears sticking out them.
Sub Inspector Eglington and his troopers of the Queensland Native Police arrived from Boulia and went with parties of settlers into the spurs of the Selwyn range to disperse the Kalkadoons a fight took place scores were killed but the tribe survived to fight another day. The Kalkadoon had not expected the power of the carbines against their spears the warrior was indignant to defeat and though the Paper the Pastoral Frontier in 1901 said three hundred had been killed for the next five years they proved not to be a spent force they harassed the Settlers supply lines, drove away and killed their cattle and speared any bushman that was caught of guard. Herds of cattle became that wild and nervous from so many attacks at night the Stockman had to have great skill handling them. The Kalkadoons were bold and calculating with their raids while stock men were repelling on lot of raiders another horde would be attacking on the flank and another lot raiding the homesteads.
The Kalkadoon proved that much a threat to the White Settler that the Government of Queensland Police Commissioner D. T Seymour gave the Police Officer Alexandra Kennedy a blank cheque to wage war against them.
Cloncurry in the 1800's was an isolated outpost in a wild frontier and in an effort to quell the threat of the Kalkadoon hordes of warriors the Queensland Government stationed a Marcus de la Poer Beresford to the town with his Native troopers to respond any disturbance instead of having to notify Boulia a considerable distance away anytime an incident happened.
On the night of 24 January 1883 Sub Inspector Beresford and four of his troopers were camped on a spur of the Mackinlay ranges , they had been up hunting another person wanted for some crime when they had come across a Kalkadoon party who gave up themselves as prisoners without any fight which was unusual, Beresford corralled them into a gorge with an inefficient guard for the night and through his interpreter he told them what he was going decide what to do with them them next day. But Beresford made an error not realising the Kalkadoons had cache of weapons hidden in all their gorges and during the night they attacked and killed all but one native trooper that managed to get a shot off wounding an warrior and scaring the rest away he was speared in the malady but still struggled 20 miles of rough country with a spear in him to raise the alarm.
Because of low morale of the people of Cloncurry the then Governor of Queensland the then Sir Thomas McIlwraith appointed a Fredrick Charles Urquhart and son of a military man with service in the navy to the Position of Sub Inspector first class.
Urquhart took up Service in 1883 and being highly military trained he was strict in his training of his Native Troopers and drilled his men with his Prussian venom. he rounded up all horse from every where he could and had his detachment ready for operations to hunt down the Kalkadoon. The warrior's had heard of Urquhart and were challenging him to come out to their rocky fortress's among the hills. They had contacted one of the troopers to give a message to Urquhart to come out in the bush so they would finish him like Beresford.
In 1884 a Stockman James White Powell had been mustering cattle near Carlton hills when he had taken his cattle up a wrong creek with three creeks running in one direction it was easy to make a mistake, the creek is now called Mistake creek. He had with him his Jacky Boy and that night decided to camp near the creek and nearby a group of Kalkadoon decided to camp. There was wild Kalkadoon and some native boys from the Station's among the horde as they had horses. Then during the night Powell got angry at the Aboriginal and told them to move their horse as he wanted to water his cattle which they did angrily. Jacky Boy told him about them talking about him being bossy and who does he think he is telling us the Kalkadoon to move of our land but Powell just told him to ignore it, and settled for the night and after reading at night with his carbibe light he was killed as he slept. Jacky Boy was speared but manage to crawl back many miles to Carlton Station. The word was quickly conveyed to Urquhart who had himself and the Troopers quickly at the murder scene. Powell was buried and the party went off in pursuit of the Kalkadoons who were found feasting in a gorge on Powell's cattle after a outburst of fire from carbines a lot of men, some women and children were killed, some Warriors escaped other tracked down and dispersed off by native troopers, the numbers were not recorded.

Urquhart seem satisfied with his punitive action by one of the verses he scribes
Grimly the troopers stood around
That new made Forrest grave
And to their eyes that fresh heap mound
For vengeance seems to crave
And one spoke out in deep stern tones
And raised his hand up high
For everyone of these poor bones
A Kalkadoon shall die
Urquhart spent nine weeks with Native troopers and posse's of Settlers going around shooting any of tribes they could find.
At the foothills of the Argylla range was Granada station with Sheep. Hopkins the owner of the station had a Chinese man like many of the Stations caring for the sheep while he was in town .
On returning with supplies on September 1884 he found the Aboriginal hordes had raided his place, dingoes had attacked the sheep the Chinese Shepherd was missing. His remains were later found at an Aboriginal camp some distance away.
For the owner Hopkins this was the last straw and urged speedy retribution against the perpetrators in the form of a punitive expedition. He not only wanted them to be taught a lesson but some sort of ethnic cleansing action to rid them of being left at large to cause any more trouble.
Urquhart was called to the killing with Native troopers, Hopkins gathered all the men he could, the word got out to other stations that a reprisal was being held against the Kalkadoons to wipe them out for good. Pastoralist, Stockmen and other station hands came from all over the district to take part in the punitive action.
The body of men Urquhart had at his disposal was the strength of a small company in military terms. As usual the Kalkadoon warriors had moved on rapidly but were tracked by Troopers but the Kalkadoons were observant to their tracking from the hills this they knew what was more than just punitive action and had to be dealt with so retreated to the head of Prospectors creek with they had a large stash of weapons made ready at their disposal. Pearson claims the Kalkadoons had a horde of a thousand warriors but true numbers were never recorded. The Warriors assembled themselves in the rocky outcrop at the place to become know as Battle Mountain to their cache of Boomerangs Nula Nula and Spears was substantial and the warriors organised into groups ready for the approaching battle.
The Kalkadoons had a tactical advantage over the attacker being up high to see any approaching Troopers.
Urquhart carried out the regulations to the letter yelling out Stand in the Queens Name. The Kalkadoons replied with a large volley of rocks. Urquhart and his men approached the lower slopes with a gallop hoping to scare the Kalkadoons from their defencive position but this was just met with a volley of spears and rocks.
As the slope was much to steep for the horses, the men had to dismount and scramble up the hill when more rocks were thrown at them Urquhart was hit with a chunk of ant bed knocking him out one of the troopers shot the perpetrator. Because he was so temporarily immobilised the attack had to come to a halt a temporary truce. Dead Aborigines and injured Whites lay around the hillside as the injured white were collected the Kalkadoons were yelling their tribal slang. When Urquhart had recovered he decide to change tactics and try a flanking movement with an attack up the opposite side of the mountain.The move was effective for the warriors could not organise themselves to fight of the attackers in both directions.Then unexpectedly the Kalkadoons formed ranks like well disciplined soldiers and with heavy spears carried out in front as lances advanced in battle formation down the mountain into the fire of the carbines. Under heavy fire many fell and the others retreated to the rock formation only to reform in ranks and attack again.Valorous and courageous was their actions that eventually led to their defeat and destruction, they were the strongest and bravest of all the Aboriginal tribes. The Kalkadoon was successful in his guerrilla warfare but to adopt conventional battle tactics as had the Maoris in New Zealand had was their downfall as their nulla nulla and spears were no match for the carbine.Their attack in formation was just like a charge of the light brigade and the mountain was soon just covered with dead Kalkadoons in their hundreds, this was the first time the troopers could shoot at advancing warriors and make every bullet count. Though this was a brave act by the Warriors they really did not understand the power of the Carbine but the Kalkadoons had gone down in Australian history as the only tribe to have the courage to stand the ground against the white settler in battle.

The slaughter did not stop there with the mountain Urquhart and his Troopers carried on with cleaning up operations that lasted for several days. Killing all warriors in camps they could find.and driving the few others to the outskirts of their range where they suffered severe hardship some after time had to go back to the stations because of starvation. The Battle of the Mountain was when the best Kalkadoon warriors were slain. Professor Geoffrey Blainey says the Kalkadoons in that battle were slaughtered in such great numbers the hills were littered with bleached bone of gins picaninnies and warriors for decades to come. The dis-possessors in driving the Kalkadoons from their permanent water holes and hunting ground did not realise how they were aiding the effect of detribalization.The cattle had virtually killed of all their native foods and the remaining Aborigines were forced into the stations to beg for rations for work.
With the settlers diet of flour and sugar the normal vitamins and minerals they received from their native foods was missing and resistance to ill was lost and any later killed of by diseases and illnesses of the Settlers.
The bush was becoming devoid of Native food the kangaroo was now wary and nervous from the sound of Settlers rifles. Starvation forced them came to the Stations and were given a set of clothes to wear but due to constant wearing they became filthy and were not discarded and worn when wet helping with the transmission to influenza.
Some stations had them in squalid conditions and depression grew among the people that they became apathetic to their removal of excreta and cleanliness then diseases such as typhoid and dysentery.
The frowning dwindling Councils of Old men and the savage Witch doctor did not and could not understand what was going on with the young men and women being attracted to the White Settlers and in some case encourage the Women to leave and permissions were given under Aboriginal law and the young buck who had being waiting now had to wait years longer so he was led away by the lure of money, good clothes sometimes the grog and the cigarette. A lot of the young men would return to the tribe with their new possessions of metal tools and the diseases from smallpox to measles of the Settler to decimate their tribe.

The Process of detribalisation also bought on demoralisation of the tribe, within the tribe structure an Aboriginal woman was promised to her birthright chosen warrior. Each girl knew her future partner would be and once the restraints were of the rigid tribal system were removed and lack of guidance from their totem mother's there was confusion. Now exposed to the European society where there was more men than women and the women were subordinated to the pastoral system a situation had arisen where the women could be exploited by the odd white station hands for favour of a sexual nature.
In a Queensland Government report by Meston, he stated that once the Aboriginals along the Coast of the Carpentaria had acquired a taste for tobacco and flour they would make the women available to the trader for sexual favours to acquire such items. This in some cases can be seen as more a trade for what now had become survival items from starvation which was prevalent among tribes with no range to collect food or hunt. Many cases were known of starving Kalkadoon women that were taken advantage by the Station owner's, starvation had forced many a woman into prostitution so it was inevitable for venereal disease to spread.
Venereal diseases were very prevalent among-st the Kalkadoons during detribalisation. Dr W.E Roth Medical officer at Cloncurry hospital noted it was that rife that the Aborigines had resorted to the use of the gum of the Bloodwood tree as some sort of cure, both internal boiled with water and external application dusted on as powder on the venereal sores.
The dire straits for the Kalkadoons losing their moral values and exposure to the disease not only the suffering and pain it caused to the victim but that over time fewer children were being born. The flow on effect was less children then surviving infancy. Infectious diseases such as respiratory and gastroenteritis were known to have taken the biggest toll on the infants.
The Adults were more susceptible to disease also with the European diet forced on them.
Then the psychological state of confusion mixed with alcohol and tobacco in this new foreign socio-economic system made the general populace of the Aboriginal as a whole less able to resist all western diseases.
It was noted by Dr Harvey Sutton at Cloncurry hospital in the 1890's that many a Kalkadoon came in with wounds that were obtained in general work on stations by cuts from barb wire etc from lack of experience in handling such things were becoming infected with septicaemia. All infections were on the rise generally as the true resistance and tribal spirit of the Kalkadoon was broken by the 1900's there was very little trouble from the Kalkadoons they were a broken tribe declining in numbers.

One of their arch dis possessors Alexandra Kelly had a group Kalkadoon warriors confined to their camp issuing them with station rations just to keep them surviving probably one of the more humane of the time In those days there was many a station that used of chains and shackles and worked as a chain gang only the young were allowed to roam and help with menial station chores.

The Aboriginal, Jacky boy to the European was at home on the horse maybe the fact that both were wild things of of the natural world more than European man which made them more connected to the animal spirit.

The Queensland Native Trooper gained quite a reputation for being ruthless and the best as trackers of their quarry. Their services extended borders to hunt for Bush-ranger's like Ned Kelly and others who would often live among the coastal tribes.

Tribal marker Stone , Location uncovered Dee River Near Railway station exposed by erosion from way below the coal and old waggon wheel sediments levels. Some time large stones were used to mark graves of important Elders as was the carving of trees. Burial was much similar to modern day rituals the body was often placed in a bark type coffin and buried tree carved or stone set but was avoided and not maintained for fear of spirits. Other stones marked ceremonial grounds some that most women had been taught to avoid by their totem aunt for fear of Death.

High mountain area marker stone above South southeast of Mt Morgan township in walking distance to the Dee river.

Marker stones were the markers of Elders Ceremonial meeting grounds and put in specific designs of circles depending on the rain making or Initiation ceremony.

Aboriginal tribes had no chiefs or ruler and only the loosest form of Political Organisation.Their Religious and Social values were enforced relentlessly by the older men, who also sought to settle serious quarrels and punish offences against the group. These Elders,being masters of all Tribal, Totemic law, magic and medicine, were best informed on practical matters like food and water supplies. Their law was reinforced and monitored by fully initiated Warriors who were ambitious to become one day one of the group of elders. On their hunting journeys through outlying camps during the day they would socialise and hear the gossip of the others.

With Australian Aboriginals the tribal thesis was not just old age gave you a right to to rule but the process of surviving the initiation and being a proved hunter, fighter and at same time to demonstrate the wisdom of maturity.

Because the Aboriginal people had no writing to record history it had to be remembered and the old men were the store houses of such knowledge.

The system of rule by old men worked out fine their tribal government gave very little chance for the rise of an autocratic oppressive ruler, any over zealous Elder with ideas of gaining their way was limited by others in the group.

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Picture of Aboriginal tribe Mt Morgan 1903

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The Mining operations were extensive by 1903 there was very little land the Aboriginal people had left to hunt or even live on near their Dee river.

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Every tree was cut to provide timber for the mine

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Large Hand axe and pick from granite area down near the Town dam Mt Morgan.

Again the marker stone and a flat maybe seed grinding plate diet did consist of a lot of acacia seed flour that was cooked on hot rocks like biscuits

Marker stone and Ceremonial stone from Mt Morgan area's mainly Dee river .

In front some axes and a large ochre stone for ceremonial paint.

Axes, spear head and Ochre stone from Old West Mt Morgan township area now Mining exploration lease.

This mountain range behind mine area has many caves and littered with artifacts, one has had only twice to have chance to be able to walk there and explore. One can see how the coastal people were separated from the Western people with the rough and arid the ranges are in dry time so any meeting would have only been orchestrated in good rainfall times . Most areas of not mined land has scattered artifacts of one Tribe at one time or another and no doubt the tailing heaps from the mines have heaps.
A lot of Ferrous oxide rock Pleiosaur fossil broken into club stones and axes have been found in over burden near caves obviously dug up tossed aside in the search for gold.

Tooth hole in bone matrix Plesiosaur Familae Leptocleidae, species Leptocleidis sub species Andrews, Lower Cretaceous period.
http://plesiosauria.com/leptocleidus.php

I have people that doubt my belief that every rock on Australia's surface has been disturbed in pattern other than erosion by Aboriginal people at one time or another in the History of Australia. We have had people walking over the ground for
1 million years to 40,000 years and all they had to use as tools is rocks wood and bones so my theory sounds very feasible even the gemstones and gold nuggets were used to adorn clubs and first settlers and many people today say these Aboriginal had no use of gold,minerals and gems so we can go ahead take them all.
When miners first came to Mt Morgan they used to give a bag of flour to Aboriginal people for a bucket of gold nuggets and the books say the Aboriginal people had better eyes for spotting such items which in some sense is true they did have better vision but I am more to believe that the Native people knew every rock on their piece of land and why would they not they walked it everyday and rocks were the source of spear heads and axes.
As a Amateur Geologist I walk over lots of land and eventually I get to recognise every type of stone with notable patterns and colours and the native peoples intelligent levels were probably as high or even higher than myself.

Top-Comparisons between Mt Morgan Shale's and Bajool/Marmor Old Coach road Quartz, below Dee river and Gentle Annie Road Marmor limestone. This shape cutting is also a popular design at most other places I go, I am sure they are meant to fit in forks of ironwood wattle or similar and used as a club. If this is right the Aboriginal person that built these as clubs to swing would have to be large framed robust healthy and strong.

Long rocks as they are also known in the Dee before last flood now unknown.

A lot of these rocks have been finished of to a ultra smooth shape most have a groove in them on one or two faces maybe they were part of large club would have to be something ceremonial one would find such large item hard to swing in bush hunting animals bit hard unless you were maybe large and hunting large animals.

These large pieces of slag are way to heavy for me to lift nowadays, I do have a broken back but these I found sitting just like they are now. They are the same pattern as the marker stone rocks in the river the flat one more so than the other but their has character . These I declare as artworks with so much dedication and work the people were craftsman at what they did. Like an artist there is a little bit of the maker soul in his item.

Another straight Marker stone made of Slag , One wonder were these just another hammer stones first made with smaller ones to chip away the bigger ones.

This one has the pick end good use as a hand tool or maybe there was the intention of being put in a club fork not realising the mine was going to take all the timber away for mine and house construction.

This one like most the items cut has character it looks to me cut to put in the fork of a solid wattle branch ,

Along either side of the river bank near the old Mt Morgan railway members of the remaining Tribes tried to survive of the merger handouts for work or what gold nuggets they could find.

After the first erosion from the mine clean up lots of glass old porcelain artifacts were littering the sand and scrapped soil areas just down from the railway bridge and station but now erosion has taken the bridge and most of the soil.

Downstream at the Old mine bridge across to now Newman oval where I had dug many small holes in the sand base just up stream from the bridge to find all the clay and first sub-fossils the good sand was washed down stream providing some bones unearthed with the erosion.Over the other side I have been told China men used to wash gold some large Chinese fan palms stands much testament to that and where the Chinese lived so did the Aboriginal as both were considered outcast by original settlers.

2015 we have a major move of a lot of rocks from the railway bridge area and beyond down more than a mile to here over the original cleaned ground, dam the erosion .

The Mine was no benefit to the natives more or less leaving them much worse of than ever before in the history of their ancestors.

The site of the Mines first power station in the 1920's the Aboriginal people lived along the banks of the Dee river here taking some advantage to of the Weir that was built to store water for the Station. Some of the largest trunk-ed gums can be found over close to the Old Assay material that was dumped in the river below could be close to being maybe original tree's.

Most Old Hotel sites as their was not much private housing in a new town of travellers hoping to find fortune are now just remnants of the imported species. Some sites have dumps with worked glass parts of the large thick wine bottles turned into effective knives and no doubt some were utilised as spears.

Old Settlers houses were often built on a hill not really for the protection of Flooding but more to the worry of Aboriginal people coming directly in contact with them out of low nearby bush. With a cleared hill it was easy to spot what the settlers regarded in an ironic way as Aboriginal intruders.

The first Settlers and Miners came and used all the marker stones as terrace stones as the hilly areas first settled was sloping in most cases, terracing levelled the building blocks of and holes of old Toilet dump holes ended up their bottle and other rubbish dumps.

The land was cleared of the large Iron barks that supported a whole community of life forms food of the Aboriginal people to replaced with cattle of the rich grazer.

The Kalkadoon people of Western Queensland was one tribe that carried out a guerrilla war against the white invader, which at one time them attacking the carbine rifles of the troops with spears in garrison formation. Their unsuccessful attempt to evict the white invader was hampered but the supply of food and water and some lack of communication between large area of spread out tribes. They had a common action of slaughtering the farmers beast and having a barbecue with large bonfires just out of rifle shot range of the homesteads. In coastal areas like Bowen and Rockhampton food crops like corn and other vegetables were raided during the night and usually stamped into the ground in the process

Sustained guerrilla war was difficulties with logistics and communications between tribes and food supply for the warriors.

Acacia liguata the timber was the best with strength used by the Aboriginal People. The area used to have numerous tree's once I guess, now only the odd garden planted one remains .

Acacia liguata or Iron woods scientific name was the best timber Aboriginal people used for axes and Clubs as it is extremely hard to cut and very hard to break.

I used a four inch diameter branch of one down in Bouldercombe to winch a motor out one ton utility some 10 times never even marked the bark.

This one still had the piece of slag on the top is one of the most awesome carved Slag Items I have ever seen must weigh some 60 to 80 kg. This size artifact I could not see being used as a club stone because of it's size but then we do not really know the size of the people, One would assume it was a Tribal Marker stone used for ceremonial purposes. Maybe story telling in time's of recreation as not all time was spent on gathering food . Food was very available in the time before settlement by the miner's. This fact can be deducted by the size of the artifacts in a way one would have to be healthy to swing such clubs and axes and very organised as a group not only to have manufactured them but to trade them with other nearby tribes who has only access to inferior type rocks.
Accurate estimates of the aboriginal population of certain tribal areas is not available , Various anthropologist have made calculations of tribal size. Elkin. One scientist calculated the
membership of tribe from ranging 500 to 600, Tindale speaks of 600 but adds it might be less, Abbie estimates the Tribes ranged from about 500 to 2000. The tribes were broken into smaller groups called by Anthropologist as the horde, these hordes roamed hunting and gathering food on area's on tribal land most tribal boundaries were large rivers of mountain ranges the rivers being the most sought after trading place. The tribe was a Political and economic organisation that shared the same dialect, beliefs and customs.
The Elders form a Tribal council that controlled the food distribution according to tribal stature. Not all members of any tribe were allowed to eat all foods this was probably enforced to make sure food supplies were adequate at all time of the seasons and other totemic beliefs that come from their Spirit world .
The Eastern Tribe's were usually warring with their Western neighbours but all was forgotten for a few times a year if the seasons were good this was when they came together for corroboree these ceremonies last continuous for a few days of feasting singing and dancing.

These ceremonies were for initiation of the younger members of the tribe. These Ceremonies were important for the elders to assert their laws and traditions on the younger warriors to be. Women were not immune from such initiation ceremonies as the cutting of a finger joint with women was promoted in all tribes and was sometimes conducted in large ceremonies of neighbouring tribes together usually in the time after the wet seasons had been letting there be enough water in holes around the bush allowing large numbers of tribes to travel long distances.
Women would collect large amounts of yams and other foods for days in preparation for such events though most times a lot were excluded from attending such event but were able to view from their camps where they held their own little dance time.
Girls sometimes as babies would have the tip of the finger removed by the mother by biting it of and caressing the baby to their breast to quell the crying spiderweb and kaolin clay was bound around to heal the wound. The finger piece was kept by the mother as an omen and memento. In the ceremony it was usually tied with plated hair string removed with a stone knife when circulation was blocked. The removal of the finger joint or all the little finger was supposed to be an aid in the digging of yams it was believed a smaller deeper hole was able to be dug.
Around the age of five the young girls were brought to a Ceremony with some Elders sitting in the middle of a ring of stones and while other women played the drum one was brought to the elder who in a process put a hole through the inside part of the youngsters nose with a small bone awl the mother has a piece wood lined with lots gonna fat to put through, the fat stopped the bleeding though most time the child fainted the mother would cuddle her and stay close every few hours even in the night turning the piece of wood and lining it with fat a couple of days later the child would be showing her friends the hole and stretching to make it bigger. It was now part of her scarring to become recognised as one of the strongest in the tribe.

Children were taught a spartan lifestyle to make them grow strong to resist disease infection hunger and hardship.and were known to willing inflict wounds in each other and themselves stone knives and then treat them so the scar would heal large this was part of a strength and hardness as a Warrior test which usually started in their teens. Children or rather babies were weaned of the breast when 3 years of age it was when the wife was falling pregnant again, their food was pre-chewed by the mother for a period of time and depending on how good that chewing was done was key to the child's survival. It was noted that survival rate was not good which meant only the strongest survived which was a trait much need for life in the bush as a woman climbing the tree or a warrior hunting the kangaroo.

The Ceremonies were very much controlled by the Council of Elders and the severeness of some Initiation practises were enough to make a many young buck leave the tribe and go work for the white settler the third right of initiation was one of the most painful. The women and children were chased from camp by the elders the young men were rounded up and put standing in a round circle of rocks with the elders in another circle. A couple elders would go grab one youngster at a time and hold him down in their circle sometimes knock him out with a rock most just put a piece of wood between his teeth as two held his legs apart and another performed an operation of putting an porcupine, Echidna spike or some sharpened bone similar piercing through his penis skin and flesh. then he was quickly thrown to the arms of his totem uncles who would collect some of the blood to be put on the fire. Fine clay and herbs was used to fill the hole and he was gently looked after till the piercing had healed. The final initiation ceremony had never been witnessed by Ion Idress on his journey's but it was the piecing of the tongue to allow the Warrior to whistler. The Elders and the now young Warriors had spent Ceremony time in the bush learning the taboos and when returned to camp after the Mika ceremony were allowed to partake in meetings of elders and offer opinions for the good of the tribe not that the elders would have taken much notice being the most stubborn of beings. They could now claim nearly all the game they speared except for a portion for the lesser degree . They were also have more freedom with the women strictly according to Law of course. All the Lubras Women Folk, of course had been promised by their fathers at babyhood to the husbands according to Tribal law and personal and Totemic relationship, law born in the Dream time of the tribe to be abide to as long as the tribe exist . They already had this explained to them at time of second initiation and any breaking this law by man or woman meant death.
Should the Law ever be abandoned this would be shame to the spirit ancestors and the tribe would breakup and no longer exist. some warriors have to wait for their totemic wives grew up and had been through the degrees of initiation of womanhood. Meanwhile as the girl grew up into womanhood the warrior would give part of his kill to the father until it came time for him to claim her. If he felt in the meantime he need a woman now he could come in agreement with and old warrior who had a few wives to spare for a price. Otherwise he must live for the tribe while waiting his woman or there was the option he could steal a women from a neighbouring tribe. This was the most risky of all proposition's not only had he to enter the other tribal grounds usually at night he had to raid the women's Gunyas and steal a young woman without being killed by the totemic mothers of the girls and make it out of the camp alive. stolen women were accepted by the tribe but were given a lesser status.
The Settler Stockman was considered a clean skin as was the preferable worker from the Aboriginal by the Stockman this referred to any Aboriginal that had not undergone any of the initiation ceremonies the tooth knocking ceremony was the first and made it easy to distinguish between those that had. Those with scarring from ceremonies were given little activities and just minimal rations in squalid holding camps on a lot of Cattle and sheep stations.

This sort of relates to modern day tattoo's in a way as some of them are not only painful but to a display of prowess and individuality. The cutting and scarring was started in their teens with sharp stone knives they would cut each other and rub in wood ash to open the wound to make it a bigger scar.

At the age of 12 13 the girls would be all decorated with living butterflies beetles and small lizards glued to their hair, circles were drawn over their bodies with glued feathers and ochre. This was usually a spring time moment a time of plenty.

The young girls would be lead out the bush to dance and sing around a bunch of old Greybeard Elders squatting around a maypole thing lots of smoke was made by feeding the fire's with special smoke wood. One girl was selected from the group at a time to be held by one of the elders while the other rubbed chew ochre and spit it on the body of the girl and rubbed it in circles over her body in some ritualistic belief it was to calm and relieve the pain of what was to come also poking here with a special stick But Elder had hidden in his hair another stick was drawn out He would force the girls legs apart to wound the young girl in the pubic area after while immense amounts of smoke was created. The Young girl was then handed usually in fainted condition to her totem aunties and mother who took her off in the bush to the sacred place where they would care her wound with herbs and kaolin clay. Other women sitting around the outside the circle played the drums and the Kylie's, Nula Nula, music sticks and chanted in time as all the young girls were put through.
This ceremony reason comes from their sacred and totemic beliefs. This belief is that the by this operation the Elders of the Tribe had consummated the girl's marriage to an ancestral spirit husband. He had been her Husband or other in a previous life on earth and now at anytime while she is still at child bearing age he could be reborn again to another earth life should he wish it. All spirit Husbands are very jealous and would haunt the tribe if they did not get what was granted to them as it had be grant to the correct Spirit people from time immemorial. Should he wish to return to Earth all he had to do was wait for the girl to be married , then he would transform himself into a baby spirit, and chose one of the baby spirit groves, some quiet glen, secluded lagoon, beautiful clump of trees, rock formation where spirits congregate and play spying out on the land and waiting for an unwary woman to pass by, some innocent woman dreaming of her warrior husband. He of course must recognise the girl and having right of entry would do and the innocent girl would walk on not even dream as yet the baby spirit had entered her. By the time she had done so it had it would have become a human baby.
Thus from the Spirit World her baby would come and back to the Spirit world it would return.
Their was the presence of debil debil spirits among the spirit world and the Elders believed in the circle would protect them and the initiate as during the ceremonies
The circle was to the tribe people as a sacred place free of evil spirits and was destroyed after the Ceremony in case the evil spirits learnt of it's secret and would penetrate the circle at the next ceremony and could cause great harm to the Witch doctor and the initiate.
The womanhood initiation was to prepare the girl on her journey into womanhood to be accepted by her man
Much the same belief was held all the world over by ancient civilisations such as the Assyrians, Indians, Chinese Egyptians and the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia.
Women were seldom allowed to join most Corroborre's that involved the older initiation ceremonies of the young males and were not permitted to even venture on the sacred ground, if it was even done by accident and noticed clubbing to death was the punishment. The body would be burnt on site and buried, the Elders would have to move the Ceremony ground that was believed to be contaminated and this piece of ground was never used again for any such purpose. This was mainly in the case of men only corroborree's that were in action singing and dancing sometimes for many days on end .

Women had some time free to themselves but still had chores of collecting food for whole tribe especially when the singing and dancing men of the corroboree carried on for over a week at time's. The Warriors of the tribe often went hunting large game in parties at regular intervals while the elders sat round in shade when there were no ceremonies.
In the south east of Australia we have only White mans records of ceremonies James Dawson 1881 writes a broad account of Aboriginal corroboree ceremonial dressage and activities of the dance. The men had faces painted with strips of red ochre possum skin head dress necklaces of beads or Kangaroo teeth. The torso of the body was painted with white ochre, sometimes feather bracelets leaves were tied around the ankles to give a rustling noise. The Wives of the chiefs also wore red stripes of ochre across the cheeks and some flower or feather decorations in the hair and necklace. Some of the men stood near the fire clicking music sticks in times sometimes a didgeridoo player hummed a deep tune in the background. One of painted men would jump out in front of the music player's then would stretch arms and legs wide with a quivering movement making the leaves on his ankles stir up the dust around him and then disappear back in the group to replaced by another dancer after dancer all doing the same movements getting faster as the music players sped up the beat of the music sticks. This created illusion and a mystifying presence with the appearance and disappearance of different dancers connecting them with the great invisible creation spirit.
Sometimes the ochre was different colours but the dance was very much similar Australia all over. Tasmanian Aboriginals used black ochre and sometimes used tar to paint their bodies as it was so cold at times down there it probably acted as an insulating purpose at the same time. Most aboriginals wore Kangaroo skin coats and possum or koala skin hats in the cold seasons of the lowland and highland parts of Australia and Tasmania
Ion Idriess who was mining on the side of a Carpentaria river one day the aboriginal children played es practising throwing spears around , the women were collecting yams and firewood nearby some were just chattering as hunters were coming and going from the camp. Half a dozen heavily painted men emerged in a group and stood there for 1/2 an hour until a dignified elder walked forward and demanded their business. They presented documents of vividly painted sticks with lines and bars deeply burnt in both sides.
Later there was much activity in the camp of collecting feathers and paints. Several days later a group of men coming running out the bush chanting with spears in the air then with one stamp stood still with a roar of voice thrusting the spears upwards, then they stood still and quiet till one of the elders inspected them. This went on for days, while men in camp were being painted and massaged with oils. At night they sang and danced around fires to the sound of music sticks in the daytime Hunters were bringing in lots of game the women collected tubers, roots, fish, berries, honey, snakes, porcupines, lizards, possums, wild geese duck, pelican and waterhen, a large amount of food for a regular feasting. A group of young initiates men all between the age of 12 and 13 were led out of camp to a separate Corroboree ground where fires were burning in some circles and elders sat in others each having his turn of instilling his knowledge of the Aboriginal law and Dream time into the young new up and coming warriors and hunters for the tribe.
They had to learn that breaking the law was not an option and growing up to be a good hunter meant everything for the security of the tribe. This took a week then one morning the young men were herded back to camp where the women were playing the drums, music sticks and chanting with their heads down. The young dazed men stood in a group the elders sat in a stone circle and one by one they were grabbed and took inside the circle to have the elders hold them down and with a small stone chisel and another for a hammer a tooth was knocked out and with a scream from the Elder it was tossed into the fire. When all were done they tried to move back to the women but the women, mothers and sisters had to raise a branches of fire in front of them all chanting together.

The young men then knew it was the last goodbye and had to go stand in a group away from the people there they stayed under a tree given merger food for some three weeks to be known as the Sun boys. The sound of whine of the Bullroarer's disturbed the morning air and women and children ran of helter skelter into the bush with their baskets to collect food.
The Boys still in the group had been oiled by some of the elders and were now to experience the 3 degree of the Initiation with great hesitation this ceremony no women were allowed to be present only Warriors and Elders. Stone circles were constructed for the Elders and the fires and one by one the young men were grabbed and taken by the Elders into the circle where one was given the job of knocking the lad out with a rock which most times was only partly so and another grabbed his penis and with a small stone knife hacked of the foreskin and with loud blood curdling screams threw it in the fire. He was then taken out of the circle to where the witch doctors applied kaolin clay and spider webs to stop the bleeding. The young men now could not sit but squat for a couple of weeks, it was not known if any ever bled to death but the Old wise men were wise enough to know to do the operation right and not to lose a valuable warrior for the tribe. Many got septic and when the lad had trouble walking he was giving a steam cure where a fire was lit heating rocks in a small hole then put out with water and Eucalyptus leaves, paper bark sheets were laid on top with a small hole for his penis where he was thrust on top and held there for a short period of time the steam off the rocks cleaned the infections and the boys recovered. Grass trees resin and Bloodwood Ironbark sap were was all crushed and used as powder to stem infections when available oil of gonna or porcupine fat.
After the main ceremony the lads were taken a side and given two spears one from his father and other from an uncle, his first knife with paper bark pouch and was allocated a gunya hut in the camp area away from the women. They were a few day later advised they were now fully fledged Warriors with all warrior rights and responsibilities. They were now allowed to sit on in the council of Elders and were able to give an opinion , not that the opinion would be listened to as the elders were a stubborn lot. They could also add more markings to their bodes signifying they had completed the Mika last Ceremony . They could now claim more of their game they killed in hunting though they always had to donate a portion to a lesser and of course a totem relative.
They could have more freedom with women now but within the law and of course according to their totem chosen.
Ion Idress tells of a Warrior Brignor who had just received his talking with some other 14 that had been initiated. Brignor had been noisy and savage during his painful initiation but even so was brave to stand up and explain to the Elders that his choice of mate was Lilbanja. The Elders sat and stroked his beard just like one would expect of a Ruler of the people. He explained there were only two lubras Widgee for Gogodja, Warrine for Kippera, as for Brignor who desired Lilbana that was impossible, as he should know the she had long been promised to and paid for by Mangarippy, her correct group husband, who would claim her from her totemic father and Uncle shortly. Times were hard with the Settler invasion less babies were born and the Death Spirit had come and stole a lot of the women in the tribe.
Gnarled old Mangarippy was just a lazy loafing grey beard of sixty three who should have been feeding the crows a long time ago.
Lilbanja would just be another handy lump cleaning and working his camp with his other two wives till she was to become child bearing age.
Mangarippy listened to the conversation as he picked the odd louse of his chest he wasn't at all worried about what Brignor had to say it was Lilbanja who he was interested being an Elder gave him the rights over the Warrior. he had spent many hours watching her grow up and inspecting her growth through childhood he noticed she was great at yam digging and finding of the water holding frogs a cold treat in these harsh hot times he could dream of her hunting and cooking gonna on the fire for him in the future.Those sharp fingernails on the thin long fingers would find him the best water holding frogs in the dry times and the best fresh onion bulbs. He was lost in his dreams to take to much notice of Brignor's antics being and Elder, he knew his wishes were protected by the other Elders who would help him guard what was his.
Brignor stormed of to his gunya where he sulked for three days he got in contact with Lilbanja through messages sent with his other Warriors companions. There was some romance with Lilbanja who also wanted to run away with him to safety of white man's country she did not want to be a servant wife to the old man with just food on his mind and already a couple of wives. Mangarippy was the most observant and when he slept there were always two other elder sitting guard watching all activities. Brignor had the other warriors over his camp in trying to get them to go on a wife raiding party into the other rival tribal grounds they were worried as their numbers nowadays were so few they knew it would not be successful. Brignor still had his determination to go get another woman and come back then live farther out on the tribes boundary. with them thinking that he was married all he thought would be forgotten by the Elder's seeing him as a happy married man then Brignor would one night do what he originally planned which was to take Lilbanja and with stolen wife go find fresher pastures closer to white man territory where thought he would be much safer.
Brignor set of in his journey in to neighbouring tribes lands after he crossed the Tribal boundary he crawled on his stomach and hid behind every wattle shrub a very nervous Brignor went to ground at every small sound after skulling along the ground for a couple of kilometers he then heard the voice of Women and children in the distance chattering as they were digging yams. When he got close he heard some of them scream and he hit the ground to hide think they might have seen him. Most were gathering their coolimons and children with bags of yams and cursing things about men. Brignor looked up and seen puffs of smoke rising from a distant hill a white puff followed by a black puff and white again and being a reader of smoke signals he knew this was the one that was warning to the women that an enemy Warrior from the neighbouring tribe was on their land. This made him a bit more nervous but no determination was lost on the plan, Brignor seeing it was along distance away wasn't going to let this distract him from his hunt for a bride e planned to be as swift as possible as soon as he had got his prise.
He seen a young woman walk past his hiding place with a baby on her hip and thought he would follow her and grab when the time was right but a cooie cooie uia uia came from out of the river nearby and he once more hit the ground. He could still hear the thud thud of the digging stick and realised it was a woman still digging yams, now this was a real woman one that would suit him well. She was just below him singing as she dug away she should have packed up and gone with her comrades but must have got lost in the moment of finding good yams. Now Brignor with a stomach full of butterflies and the eyes now of a tiger going to pounce new he had to approach with caution and ferocity. for a while he sat and admired her. Those were long legs not yet as skinny as an emu he admired their strength he knew she would be swift as her endurance was lasting as she swung the digging tool singing along. He notice her buttocks were a bit plump as were her up side but the strength in the arms in working that digging stick was what he needed to provide him with good food. He admired the mud daubed hair and the deep set eyes like a real cave girl. He was just about drooling now his face turned into a tigerest lust.
He jumped down and dropped his weapons making to much noise and the girl was quick with turning and kneeing him in the stomach loosing balance she fell to the ground with him on top of her in his agony, if she had caught him with that mischievous heel of hers he would have been withering in agony in the river. He was just temporary winded and was quick to kick her back in the stomach only to just to wind her so he could throw her over his shoulder and run but as he grabbed her ankle she was a scratching his eye's out with her sharpest nails he hung on now battering her with his head too wind her once more. She screamed with frenzied hate quickly he put his hand over her mouth to silence her but she bit it he rolled over and cursed with pain as she once more hit him with an upper thrust of the knee and another tear down the face with her talons but wary he could bite the fingers of if he wished. He had bite her on the shoulder to stop her from escaping then with some super human effort he got to lurch his knee up hit her in the stomach winding her again. She was moaning now and knew she had been beaten. Brignor took sometime to gather his breath, he was paining his bitten hand but wonder had the noise been heard though it was all gone now he knew he must recover before they came looking for him he was only a few miles from the Tribal border. He knelt over his prize admiring the firmness of the breast and realising all the blood that covered her was his own, she hissed and spat in his face and he spat right back. He tried to pick her up but she grabbed him around the knee's and bite him hard, so he quickly kneed her again winding her hard he then got her to her feet and ordered her to move in the direction of the tribe he didn't want to have to club her and carry her the three miles back. He found a light log and made her carry it to keep those hands with such nasty talons busy as he prodded her with his spear she whimpered and cursed and went along being prodded in the backside with curses in return every time she slowed down he knew haste was important . Just as they were close to the border boundary out of the dark bush's jumped a Warrior spearing him at close range enough for Brignor to be able to grab him around the throat then sink his teeth into the Warriors neck in forever tightening grip as he died. There they both died in a battle their bodies were buried at the site by other warriors. The Elders of both tribes discussed it around the morning campfire trees were marked of a Warrior's battle and the place would never be ventured ever again by either members of both tribes.The Lubra now happy with her freedom had quickly ran back to her tribe, the Kalkadoons would now keep the adventure of Brignor the man of dreams and passion alive in the stories of a Warrior as it was not crime against the tribal law to go steal a woman from another tribe it was a sign of a brave warrior.
The new Settlers offered an opportunity for many of young Aboriginal man to escape this torture and go work on the white-man's cattle property as the Aboriginal person seemed to suit the life of riding horse than some other settler stock-man they were good with the treatment of the horse.
Some ventured close to the Cities also to get odd jobs and a lot returned to their tribes as it was not their type of life and with their homecoming they bought back white man diseases that would wipe the tribe out.
Ion Idreiss writes about one Aboriginal stock man that returned could not enter his camp till someone nodded to him then when he did he had to sit alone under a tree among the dogs there were only five of the elders left sitting in their little circle only glancing once in a while at the returnee. Then when night come they all sprang on him biting and bashing with stone's, he was seriously injured with a broken leg but now had to manage survival crawling crippled the rest of his life around the tribe and begging scraps that were thrown to the dogs.
The Witch Doctor held enormous power in the tribe more sometime than the elders he controlled the spirits of the of the past and used them with bones and Portent's to cast Spells to rid evil or Debil Debil spirits for successful initiation ceremonies. The Witch Doctor was used for the dreaded bone pointing was to doom victims of crimes to death by convince them they were going to die more like some sort of controlling their minds to deep depression.
The witch doctor was responsible for the health of the people of the tribe but attendance with any severe ailment could lead to having the bone pointed and ones impending doom. One as a Doctor if he was good with his curative and spell casting he could earn some extra entitlements with food items as payments . Pituri or even sexual favours were used to settle debts. But most of the time the Witch Doctor roamed the bush doing his own hunting and sometimes he might run across a Totem relative who was obliged to share his hunt by tribal law.
Most of time he had to scrounge food if he wasn't good at his job of healing people so it was imperative that he was, he also spent time collecting spiderwebs, kaolin clay or poisons from snakes and the galls from different frogs and lizards and other items like paperbark and mushrooms. the large woody mushroom that grows on trunks of trees when soft and spongy were used as wound coverings while others were used to make poisons or induce visions.
Ion Idress tells of an Aboriginal woman bought her Husband to the witch doctor with some form of consumption. The Witch doctor painted only in orange ochre came to treat him did a dance around him spitting chewed pituri juice on his stomach then with a blood curdling scream went down and sucked a dingo's paw cover with blood out of his stomach so it was made to be seen . the man after a while got up picked up his Woman's stuff and of they wandered perfectly alright.
The Witch doctor 's biggest trick was sucking some frog, birds leg or dingo's paw from the stomach and a lot were obviously cured by some mind trick but there were those that didn't and were kept on paper bark matting and fed all different sorts of herbs and mixture's with modern day diseases that were introduced most would have died but with the typical Aboriginal life back before the settler if it wasn't a snake bite or battle injury it was simple digestive complaints from eating the wrong foods.
The Witch doctor was usually a job with not a great future as the new trainee was many a time the death of his teacher. Once he learnt the evil ways of his teacher he would sometimes use some snake venom on a spike at night and then would cut the kidneys from the dead doctor and eat the fat this was some way of inheriting the powers of his teacher. Murder was a crime which had the Penalty of clubbing to death if caught by any disgruntled Elder. The Witch doctor and Rain Maker's all had apprentices and jealousy and ambition were always an incentive to get to a high status in the tribe.

The Rainmaker was also one of the elders that had an important position in the tribe he was not always expected to attend meetings of the Elders unless it was to consult them on the weather forecast for upcoming Ceremonies or there was concern of the food supply.
He was not as feared as the Witch Doctor and in good weather times would have half a dozen assistants running around. But there was time's when those of the tribe doubted his magic as the rains had not eventuated as he has foretold . Time like these he would use some excuse like the Witch doctor was upsetting the Rain God,or the constant grumbling of the tribe itself was upsetting the rain God so the God had withdrawn the rain.
A lot was at stake with the rain makers decisions if he predicts drought and the tribe moves camp to their best water lands near the river and a flood comes and washes them away, or he predicts flood and they leave their well grassed area to move into the mountains where they could starve waiting for the flood that never comes. This was a very political job and the rain maker had to know his job so he studied the movements of the ants , birds and the plants flowering besides just the study of the sky and heat rising of distant plains. The livelihood of the whole tribe relied on the rain for the grass to grow to bring animals , bulbous root vegetables a other fruits and flowers to bare and shed seeds for the next season.

It was important to the Rain maker to convince the tribal Elders he had some power over creating the Weather so it was important he learnt from his previous Teacher the signs of reading the interactions of nature.

The Storm bird or Bush cuckoo was a noisy bird much so around time of rain say some old people.
Ceremonies were held to bring rain circles of ochre rocks were used and ancient totems were bought out of hiding places to be shown to the Rain God in hope to appease. Nature and the Aboriginal way of life ran smoothly for I say over a million years maybe some of the customs seem pagan to some of us now with our modernism rule's but balance and Harmony with Nature can be more meaningful especially when little harm is done to the environment.

Mount Morgan original township in the 1800 where most of the main hotels were was terraced into the hills behind the slag dump.
The Aboriginal people would have seen this as a valuable resource area for tool making they were quick to adapt to the lack of access to original areas of rocks as all was being mined one way or another.
Such a large resource of rocks that could be sharpened better than the rocks in the river which was taken over by the mining company or smaller claim holders of which there were many.

From Old 1800's Mine slag metal it was poured over ridge near the original Mt Morgan township near Mundic Gully it is obvious that would have been a large an organised tribe of Aboriginal people to have once broke all the poured metal and made Marker stones, Hammers picks axes and grinding plates.

They show utilisation of the available resources and a fast adaptation to the evolving situation as the river was taken over by miners from all different places the World even Chinese miners were here in large numbers some run market gardens and made terrace walls from the Aboriginal hammer stones out near Walter hall on the entrance to town. But like most Aboriginal tribes they would have been susceptible to communicable diseases. In the book Kalkadoons, lots of children and elderly died of pneumonia from being dipped in cold water by others of the Tribe when they were experienced high temperatures from such infections as measles. Due to living close to settlers they adopted the habit of wearing clothes and tended to keep wearing them even when wet a large numbers succumbed to respiratory infections.

When kept as Stockmen or general helpers on Stations they lived in cramped conditions and hygiene was poor due to Depressive conditions and outbreaks of gastroenteritis and other illness was ripe and spread among the people.

Behind the slag heap in the bush area are stonewalled terraces of the Hotels and other Businesses that existed in the 1880's 1920's some old bottle dump areas are behind what were obvious Hotel's having that era green and purple glass and in some spots I have found worked glass into knives made by Aboriginal people . The white people had come and taken over all their land close to water so there was no place to reside but on or near the dumps of the Settlers and scrounge what ever scraps they could for work or Gold nuggets they had found the change in diet to eating flour and sugar had detriment effects on their health and immune systems they were missing the vitamins they had got from natural vegetables of yams, native grass seed high protein Wattle Seed flour.

Most of their normal food had been removed by Farmers and Miners and what water remained in areas had been polluted by cattle or mining activities.

A dispossession by stealth of greed for gold being the driving force. The Government also added fire to the situation by paying miners to dig holes to find old and other minerals.

Records of first contact between Settlers, Explorers and Aboriginal groups, not frequently state that the Aborigines appeared in good health and free of disease.

Pictures from The Living Stoneage by Ion Idress show very healthy and sometimes happy people. There is certainly no indication in these early records that Aboriginal populations were disease ridden or were handicapped by widespread ill health prior to contact.

As White settlement proceed, however the reports changed and the opposite was presented- that of an aboriginal Population riddled with disease and were being decimated by it. It was noted that the diseases were mostly communicable infections and had being introduced by the settlers and flourished among the Aboriginals because of racial susceptibility (ie an inherited lack of resistance).

Others recognised that the changes in the Aboriginal conditions and behaviour consequent to settlement and partial adoption of white custom, were also likely explanations for what was happening. Dr P. M. Moodie Kalkadoons.

A piece of slag clearly showing a sharpened side this is achieved by chipping of the piece edge with another rock.

All these small items fall into the same shapes as their stone made tools and these were most likely sharper and stronger as cutters.

A couple of spear heads and one unfinished or had been used and end broken of the slag did not fall out of the melting pot in this fashion and I am sure the miner people didn't bother to create such things.

A slag needle along the old railway line back from Mundic gully is an important site, this cut slag has been transported there to use as fill but it all has been cut and shaped by Aboriginal people there along the track as there is abundant evidence of percussion small flaked chips among the fill that could not be produced by mine machinery means. The original area and time this slag originated and the other slag fill used down behind the dam wall will may ever be known but does produce some amazing artifacts.

Small fled of glass slag knife found near the Area on railway line with slag as fill one has deduced that this must have been made into artifacts insitu to have so many tiny flake offs present and many needle type splinters.

They also lived near this area in the 1920s 30's as I have found evidence of artifacts made of this glass and slag on nearby railway track side as in pictures above. Maybe they saw something magical about the shape of the slag. One can date some of the slag dumps with their knowledge of smelting and when new methods of gold extraction came on line in the 1930's with new owners of the mine returning from England with this new expertise the slag dumps became a product of more glass like. The older dumps with heavy metal were products of the first smelting they were not skilled enough with the use of molten silica to separate the minerals from the molten rock. There is a cave like area under the overhang but when it was excavated one would never know.

On the right are the artifacts rocks from the river and left versions of them made of slag from the dumps. The slag would have been much more brittle not long after making and the high amount of silica used in the smelting process would have helped give a edge that would be sharper maybe than the rocks. The river areas had been take over by miners from Chinese to Settler and areas were flooded by building the weirs as Mt Morgan suffer many a drought during it mining history and water was essential to any gold mining and not only the town supply. The practise of cyanidation of crushed to dust ore by the ball mills used large amounts of clean water and produce a enormous amounts of waste. Most waste was dumped at different sites along the river and around the mine there was no indication that the miners knew the consequences of their actions or even realised they were polluting the water source of the Aboriginal tribes. the town was blanketed in smoke and dust from the mine on a continual basis even up till the early 1970s . The high levels of lead in the air would have been detrimental on every person's health. The basic rock mined was a mixture of copper and Iron pyrites main composition lead, exposure to lead was not recognised as harmful and still is not so to this day but it would have had detrimental effects on immunity

Last two photo's have comparisons of stone to Slag metal , Slag metal versions have been found at two sites outside the mine area and and exploration lease . The sites that are on the lease are at Mundic gully slag Mountain and outside the gate at back of mine near an area called Spring creek which is miles away from any township area . Sites not on lease are along the track at railway crossing near old tunnel , behind Broken old Weir near Newman oval and behind new wall on Town dam. Slag was used as fill at one time. and recently more slag and old tailing's re dumped in the river in reconstruction and among it there were numerous artifact items .

Slag artifacts from behind mine near Spring creek as I know it one did have a seed collecting permit for the Cycads , I used to venture that way over once Mr Civie Curtis's land many of time to find the blue leaved Cycad kennedyanna species which grew high among the ranges and in the journeys come across many of sandstone cave among the ranges. many suitable for a small Aboriginal family sleeping area.

Comparisons of similar type artifacts from Mt Morgan Dee river, Quartz area Old coach Road Bajool, and Gentle Annie road Raglan , where the next image of a marker stone is from. If one was to assume these were spearhead then the animals they were hunting were large maybe the Miocene megafauna . Otherwise one could say they were all used in a throwing club tool even then they would have to be close to the animal being hunted which is possible in the once heavily wood surrounds of Australia. The Barren Plains that one notice's today came from too much Mulga and Wattle pulling then later blade ploughing the fauna into extinction by farmers wanting fatter cattle.
Once Australia was covered in forest except maybe a few deserts and wind swept hillsides the vegetation may not have been large but it was forest even if it was just stunted in some areas than others. Many times in my working life I was travelling out western area's around Blackall there was a lot of small Mulga bush very rocky country with black soils but it was being pulled down to herd goats on later would have been eroded and dust heading to the ocean.
The Aboriginal belief was the ancestors live in the spirit of the tree's and cutting down of tree was against Aboriginal law unless it was in the pursuit of honey then the tree and hive was never decimated it was left to regenerate for food for tomorrow. Aboriginal law gave out the penalty of death for chopping down the tree's something the early Settlers had found it hard to understand and many a farmer was killed in the process of clearing the land.
Though in real process the Aboriginal with his use of fire as a clearing and hunting tool shaped the types of trees that grew the areas that were regularly burnt more seed bearing wattles grew .
Some of the more ancient sites would not have been found if not for white man disturbing the areas so they could and so there could possibly be abandoned sites from the Miocene when the Aboriginal race was more prolific and with more finer rock cutting skills with some of their artifact's. Not that there is any justification for the over clearing and total destruction of species habitat.

Two artifacts very primitive hand axes from an exposed limestone area by land clearing for cattle west of Marmor Central Queensland. the exposure was limited to any study as long grass hid most of the Marker stones and erosion had just started to expose the tools'.

Large Limestone Pick type tool "Tula" for digging yams or even as a weapon if the need had to be.

Marker stone carve from Limestone reef some miles away at the ancient quarry there are lots of square shaped chunks of Limestone could they have made buildings or just barricades. One has to wonder how they had moved such large stone's maybe carried on some type of wooden stretcher. This is a clear example of large group organisation and planning, there was obvious a lots of spare time for creativity which one can assume was done in times of fertile lands and plentiful food supply not one of hardship.

Roadside view along Gentle Annie road, the limestone artifacts are only found numerous on one hill approximate 5 Kilometres from the massive reef one has to wonder did tribes lived on the other hills and not enough erosion has yet to uncover any artifact rocks or they just camped and lived this main site and hunting lands was between them and the quarry

A view from the Marker stone site on my first journey here with another geologist dude Karl Bush we climbed the other mountain over yonder looking for the limestone fossils but very disappointing only quartz and granite on that hill one limestone rock I found in paddock coming back to this hill where we struck good with the fossils. Karl was not one to really recognise the rocks as Artifacts as a few other old rock and mineral collectors one went bush with sometimes they would bring me a sample rocks, gems or fossil objects from their journeys and devoid of any personal realisation that the rocks were actual artifacts.

Artifacts from the above limestone area only small quartz is in this area but even it was used as small picks or probably studs on end of clubs. Clubs with rock on end were not only a defence tool but easy to throw at small animals for food.

Gladstone area along the Upper lower Carboniferous Yarrol fault area Bajool/Raglan.

These above are all artifacts from the above area of broken quartz of mainly shocked quartz from the Old Coach road Marmor site. This and a couple other more shocked quartz sites further down the road are just all large tool factories probably traded to the to more coast tribes who had sandy soils and not many rocky outcrops or gibber plains,

If one digs clear broken of crystals can be found which strengthens my theory that clear crystals only grow with other clear crystals and were broken of especially for some person high up in the Hierarchy of the Tribe like the Chief. The white lower right crystal quartz is a carved artifact from Mt Morgan Dee river. The surrounding areas of Old coach road are even more shocked than this quartz full of flaws and cracks now this was obviously a large tool making area and most likely a trading area for the tribe which explains the clear ones they could have come from a site down near back of Raglan which has clear crystals but impossible to access by any road. The quartz area has been dozed over in the creation of a quarry that never got built. then once there was a drilling rig here that sunk holes to find talc deep under the quartz but it was not a viable scheme so it was abandoned. The work has uncovered for me a nice collection of clear and good unclear artifacts most geologist benefit from other people's disturbing of the ground and any heavy erosion event of excavation is always worth a quick look around .

Marker stone from Port Alma area possibility Pleistocene if Corresponding mega fauna from nearby bogs are used as a time line marker. These large Limestone and Gneiss triangle cut blocks from faults were only unearthed with construction of Power lines to the Port being once a linesman and builder of such line's knew to examine these areas first. Most Poles of 35 feet had to be set at a depth of 2 meters in the ground according to regulations and the Satellite that scans the ground for background radiation and magnetism can only penetrate so far maybe a bit more damp mud situations. Lower sea levels of the Miocene to the Pleistocene would have meant possible areas of land with lagoons much similar to land the now has the sea level encroaching on to it rising the salt levels killing what were grass paddocks, some remnants of old cattle yards remain on now mud pans .

This was once land with paddocks of cattle back in the early 1920's one can see a Brigalow cattle camps in the distance towards Gladstone Yarrwol area. In land clearing practices by cattlemen since whenever I can remember is they leave only a bunch of large original trees for the cattle to camp out of the sun in the middle of the day. now this land is usually just dry sand pans most of the time one only sees bird life if it rains.
Lots of recent sediment down there are run off from European
style Agricultural practices have buried the limestone areas under the mud. It was probably much like a set of small island or lagoons type delta system as there is evidence of fresh water relying animals species of Pleistocene mega fauna so fresh might have met the salt here in one area .

Above Luke Godwin a Queensland Museum Archaeologist on his visit my place about Aboriginal artifacts I had discovered in the Dee checked out numerous artifacts I had especially got from the bogs I originally collected them because of the presence of ancient plant fossil on them. Not realizing they were once knifes and tulas until later recognizing the similarity of design as the artifacts among the Mt Morgan tonalities and shale's that had been recently exposed by DERM the Government department. By removing 2 meters of dirt out of Dee river cleaning up old mine pollution they exposed a wealth of knowledge which is now just fortuitous finds once more.

The triangle pyramid pieces are a common object guess Clubs or studded nula nula's must have been a popular and easy weapon to build. One can always throw a stick with a weighty end ore accurate than a just stone itself one has a definite increase in striking effectiveness.

Mouth Tool knifes would have been used on hunting trips and times of moving camp and mostly seem to have been made according to records in the early Paleocene

Spear tips were simple items and were meant only to injure by wound then hunting down a wound animal was much easier than outright trying to kill it as it would eventually wear out and have to rest if not die.

Above is a collection of club stones spear heads and other sharps from out of Dee river sediments. the last is a mouth tool knife originally found in a sandy area after the removal of the first over burden from Dee river cleaning. The more floods that go over the ground now and wash all these small items away and leave just boulder and large artifacts much of a sort area that was a factory for tools.

These common fresh water mussel species not seen in this size normally as my father and I used to dive for theses for food and even in the isolated Dawson river west of Rockhampton we only got 1/2 this size. the muscles were delicious just cooked slowly in coals but one been of mainly European descent liked some salt with the flesh .
The shell would have been used as tools or eating utensils I am pretty sure these were not the size even when the Settlers first came as the river was not very large from records kept and could not supply water to the residents of the newly forming township they had to build dams and weirs to secure water supply as droughts were very common and water was easily depleted. The oyster shells have evidence of an extended period of burial much longer than the 100 years that European people have been in the region.
I had found numerous examples of sub fossil's some directly implicated with parts of Ancient cave man, but due to the experience or lack of some a lot of important Heritage was deposited in Local Police bin but luck for some I had photographed and been had kept from being destroyed in computer meltdowns.,

These seem to be thoracic vertebra found sediments in a dig behind Newman oval and the part of the vertebra bone that joins the skull to the neck found deep in freshly eroded clay below old coal and rubbish level at old bridge Railway Station.

These images are from a look like a part of the human tail bone, it took me a long time to find out what it was when I did. I handed it to the authorities and explained my Daughter had done nursing training and identified this for me, but it was un-recognizable to some health people up here in Mt Morgan, so it it ended up in some tip, probably Rockhampton as I was advised by the person I handed it to.

Very hard to give anything to anyone but a Anthropologist who is interested even Queensland Museum (who obvious is not ever interested in anything I find) had been know for disposing of fossil items and photo's I have sent them they apologize saying sorry lost.

I have been once contacted by some legal people for Aboriginal people to discuss the items I have but the meetings never eventuate and communication is forgotten or lost from memories.

Bone artifacts, probable ancient man, there are people that also have commented to me that they might be part of cannibalism maybe not really in the full sense so. It was sometimes practised to eat part of an enemy person from another tribe killed in battle but only by men in special ceremonies. I am a person to more to believe these were parts of the deceased and probably from Pleistocene times and kept by elders in the tribe as totems of power or maybe as a memory ornament of the story time around the fire about the Dream tracks and animal totem of Uncle Jundemurra .

In all recent prehistory it has been noted that the Aboriginal had special ceremonies for their dead according to ones caste position in the tribe and tree carving or rock carvings were set to mark their grave site's. Most times the body was put in specially made bark coffins and in some western tribes the body wasn't buried but raised above the ground on a wooden bed.

Comparisons of Bovid/antelope from Port Alma

Megafauna sub fossils coexist in peat bogs at Port Alma and the sediments of the Dee river.

Atlas vertebra of Marsupials Protodon or Diprotondon left and Bullock right .
Diprotondon was a hippo size wombat and the Protodon a smaller but yet bigger than today's wombat. Both animals would have been easy prey for Aboriginal people to hunt as long as they were willing to venture the swamps modern day wombat learnt to burrow underground and only venture out at night, the latter being night creatures also but too large to burrow. This could be a case of man influencing evolution as usual over time.

Some large rib bones of an extremely large mammal either large Kangaroo or possible Diprotodon like animal
http://skyview.vansd.org/dfarnswo/MAMMALS/Mammal%20anatomy%20pictures/Kangaroo%20Skeleton%20.jpg

I would like to think these could be possible calalensus foot bones of the giant kangaroo one has found two of these in the gravels that definitely means more than one beast possibility a lot of animals if one considered the amount of flood waters that has gone over the area and washing others away they have similarities with the leg bones in the upper diagram.

Other ribs found that do not conform with any domestic or now native species.

Teeth < there were many different types in the sediments and hopefully more to find in future floods.

These I can identify with Cainozoic Fossils of Queensland by D Hill G Playford and J.T Woods as Euryzygoma dunense range Pleistocene Diprotodon. Some of these hippo size marsupial but bear size species existed some similar to today's wombat . These teeth are likely to have come from the smaller of the now extinct species.

Diprotodon and a smaller Clondydarth similar to a small horse like the Thrylacine also marsupials were night animals and stayed under cover all of the day and ventured to graze in the swamps at night the noise to the Aboriginal people was that of the Bunyip . The Bunyip made people disappear in the swamps as fables will tell as with the Min min lights of fluorescence gas but the animal's were herbivores and the lights just swamp gas more likely the people got lost frightened and run on to other tribal grounds. It was wise to not stray at night as an Aboriginal as the Totem aunts the Women in their caring for the girls of the initiations of tomorrow could bash one to death as there was no sex before marriage.

Phascolomis gigas a large wombat of the Pleistocene like the larger Diprotodon it said to have gone extinct some 45,000 years ago.

Other assorted teeth mostly one would think as being some version of Diprotodon , if one would show these to the Queensland Museum or others one would just likely receive domestic animal as a reply so there is never any need to share anything anymore.

The Atlas vertebra is the vertebra the articulates with the occipital condyles at rear of skull . It has a definite sign it has been buried for a long time not just the some 100 years of white man colonisation. An unknown species at the time of the mega fauna of the Tertiary period.

But after recent flood rains one had to find another and it looks enough old to be ancient sub- fossil not of any recent size of the marsupial species.

Comparisons in size of of Phascolomis gigas to modern day wombat

Picture Prehistoric Australia Hans Mincham
The Largest marsupial that ever lived was Diprotodon optatum first fossil's found in 1830 west of Sydney . These and other mega-fauna evolved at the beginning of the Tertiary late Cretaceous by the end of the Tertiary the continent had dried up considerably and the lush tropical vegetation that they relied on had gone to replaced with Deserts and some high areas of ice then also the impact of the Aboriginal people at that time put enough pressure to push the species nearly to extinction.

Probable tail bones rather than toe bones

Upper right foot bone large mammal Upper right one has thought large bird toe bone , Lower left tail bone large marsupial? lower right mammal finger or large toe bone all are stained some the same age as the other old marsupial bone's possibility the same age one would think.

The smaller species Nototherium fossils were found in 1845 it was believed to be more of a hole digger like the modern day wombat but spent most of it days in the cool of tropical swamps.

These feet bones have nothing to do with bovine and some have evidence of aboriginal carving they do match the Diprotodon foot bones on the Picture

These are also foot bones seeing all were found in the same sediments of the above and seem to have matching preservation age one could accept the fact they are also Diprotodon's

One can see much similarities with the bones in the Book Prehistoric Australia with the latter pictures of bones that my doctor said could be ankle or foot bones of a large mammal. The big flat foot was likely suited for plodding around in muddy situations. The huge hippo size marsupial flourished throughout New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania. At this time billions of tonnes of water was tide up in Glacial areas that the sea level had dropped 270 feet.the drop was not that great to allow Asia to be joined to Australia but it would have made island hopping much more easier. The Diprotodon would have been to large of an animal for the Aboriginal people to spear such size would have made also for toughness of hide though smaller ones were likely ganged up on by a large amount of warriors if driven into an inescapable trap or unable to escape a boggy situation in a hurry. One does have bone's with evidence of cuts on them so they were eaten often in this part of the country. The preceding drought and the amount of yam digging by the Women of the tribes in large numbers could have effected their food supply and reduced numbers . During the Pleistocene there has been two fairly major ice ages this would of led droughts in certain parts of any of the continents with moisture being held up in ice and changes with the sea-levels one would assume the Aboriginal people only could inhabited the lower areas where there was some forest and available fresh water and more likely the coastal areas for food and probably never ventured into the colder mountain areas.eventually with rising sea-levels did not mean more vegetation so starvation of the Diprotodon population could have been the biggest factor in the extinction . It was like the Camel species before it a tree browsing animal and the progress of forest growth to species migration would have been thousands of years apart with a sudden rise in sea-levels.

Jaws of probably bovine probably part of a bullock used with drays in the beginning of the mine one can't find any mine use of bullocks only horses? one wonders how it got so well buried and preserved in nearly the same condition as the Diprotodon bones and has some similarities in design?

Jaws at the top could be possible Diprotodon or even a large Koala the bottom is a small goat.

Again with this bone it has much similarities with a horse leg bone a lot of comment I have received are bovine but here I give a comparison in size of size and condition of preservation with one of many marsupial bones from the same strata, one could say this could be one of larger marsupial species, Smaller ones existed one could discount them as being juvenile as their bones would have decayed being not fully developed much faster than elders of the species being softer and more edible by predators.

Other side view of the Large upper leg maybe a possible Diprotodon an extremely large species it has much advanced looking preservation stain than the Bullock head and Atlas vertebra. As this land around was covered with mine sulphur waste round the time of the mine one would have thought it would have different preservation outcome. The Diprotodon was as large as a small hippo and weighed up to two tonnes a marsupial that had originated back in the late Cretaceous when Australia was part of South America and Antarctica as some of these have evidence of Aboriginal cutting so the evolution of man could go even further back then we want to realise.

The comparison of a modern day horse hip and one found with other bones in river one can see it has big possibilities of being more like a marsupial.

One does get some unknown Bone's these are hips of a Mammal that have been carved obvious for some purpose probably ceremonial, certainly aren't bovine as the normal comment is on a lot of items

An ancient bit of cooked bone made into some type of artifact I have my doubts of any aboriginal people making artifacts out of the stock of the mine.

More carved bone artifacts bit hard to be doing this to bones on land that being mined one has to say unusual . the large one being end of Diprotodon leg and couple carved foot piece of such animal in middle

Diprotodon humus bones all have evidence of man being the predator. The Bones could have been broken to access the marrow one of the most nutritious parts good enough for the young children to digest. Some of the straight cut ones could be a factor of becoming mono clinic fractured with the hardness of burial and age.

The Diprotodon family, left, two different size species rib bones, middle, a back leg bone , the front multi-joined leg bone could be bovine it clearly shows very little preservation staining but that could be the fact it was buried in a much cleaner sandy situation. Diprotodont's did have similar type of front leg situation as the diagram shows.

Toe or tail bone's Diprotodon

Largest is big enough for to be the Hip bone of the animal in question with the smaller just being an ordinary size marsupial similar a wallaby or kangaroo

Comparison with modern day horse hip to a large marsupial with much the same design as some in the preceding picture.

Assorted Marsupial hip bones top left is modern day version from Port Alma the rest from similar age Mt Morgan possible Tertiary , one could say the smaller marsupial was the preferred diet of the Aboriginal tribe . One million years ago the land was dominated by grassy landscapes with large trees marsupials roamed the plains some range from huge tree browsing animals to the smaller insect feeding Thylacine .

Ribs of small marsupial to modern day kangaroo size animal.

Assorted small marsupial leg bones Mt Morgan sediments.

Dinormis Bird leg compared to small emu type Bird both would be of the same age so there is no doubt the smaller Emu was around with the larger bird.

Hind limb of dormis Stirtoni Reference Wildlife of Gondwanaland page 172 diagram 245 this Bird was at least 12 to 15 ft high and had a head at least a foot long and weighed well over quarter of a tonne . Genyormis the smaller of the two and probably the more recent it seems as time has gone by these mega-fauna evolve to smaller type's this just an adapting to the amount of food available for the species one would assume seeing it has happened to more than one type of animal.

Again there is two different size bird leg bones with the larger to be the Dromornis distal leg bone.

Bird wing bone as they seem to appear to be to me but one has eaten many of a chicken and have yet to find this design bone so it leaves me to believe they are wing parts of the extra large Dromornis

Lower limb bones, last the distal end of Dromornis stirtoni of the late Miocene reference page 172/173 Wildlife of Gondwanaland by Patricia Rich

One has only an assumption on this atlas vertebra now we have the largest bird this would suit as the neck bone of an animal with a long large neck .

Picture Prehistoric Australia.

Picture : Australian Natural History Magazine

Image of a Bunyip or Clondydarth skull found by in Victoria in 1846 but was lost some year later being transferred from one Museum to another. maybe this was a skull of an smaller type Diprotodon species a harmless grass eater that was them mythical creature blamed for the many missing Aboriginal person that had gone walking the swamps at night. no doubt one could be trampled to death from frightening any of the larger species.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2900289/Forget-asteroids-mammoths-killed-HUMANS-Charred-debris-man-fires-not-cosmic-impact-scientists-claim.html

This head of a Buffalo is probably the only buffalo that was ever bought up the mountain range or was it around when the Diprotodon was here. It looks to well preserved and stained much so for only being in sandy soil for the last 90 to 100 years if it had belonged to the first settlers it was shear luck to have the same extent of preservation as much the other bones have.

Is this the toe of the Giant Bird of the Mega fauna period?

Bird Wing bone on top is from Port Alma peat and below is from the sediments of the Dee river they could be from a large bird like an emu as the large bird only had small wings.

The Thylacine was a night creature that preyed on small creatures such as Marsupial mice and insects it is believed to have gone extinct on the mainland of Australia after introduction of dingo from Asia. The dingo is only to have arrived here only 5000 years ago, interesting paintings of man and dingo exist in caves near Laura North Queensland which have been carbon dated to that period and with paintings left in caves in the Northern territory there is paintings of man with Thylacine following behind dragging a bag which is enough evidence to say the Thylacine was domesticated by some of the tribe to be later replaced by the dingo later from Asia.

This one has similarities to a Thylacine jaw above reference.

Thrylacinus cynocephalus

One can find a exact matching picture reference in Wildlife of Gondwanaland diagram 281 page 186.

The oldest known dog as in Dingo was unearthed at Fromm's landing rock shelter dating from 1000 bc but is believed to be here from 5000 bc when marsupials like the Thylacine and Tasmanian devil went extinct. Tasmanian devil fossils were found at the 5000 year level in excavations at Fromm's landing.

Reference < Prehistoric Australia by Hans Mincham have the Diprotodon going extinct some 5000 years ago.

Immortalised on the 1959 - 1962 Fauna stamp

One can only claim a large mammal ribs

Thoracic vertebra

These look much like large pieces of pelvis's probably been carved by the looks of it seeing I have no idea what any mega-fauna pelvis look like they could be but my suspect is ancient Hominid.

One could possibly have Ancient Aboriginal bone's but one has told the Aboriginal people and the fact is known by one of their Legal people who has once contacted me but has yet to contact me again and to come and collect such relic's.

Sub fossils from Mt Morgan Dee r sediments, some possible ancient human and some like the cut tortoise shell,of a very large tortoise not of this modern day river maybe the tool of the Aboriginal people for eating or digging

I would say an ancient Human tooth the root structure is a bit different to our to day's back teeth

In one small excavation are I found all these cooked clay pieces among the sand none had ever been wet as when they are they crumble got no idea what they relate to could be artifacts or toys for the children or just parts of ancient fires?.

Three types of ball games were played catch ball, Stick and stone and spin ball, some studies attribute the last two to recent settler influence but both were played by the Northern tribes of Queensland during the late 1800s. Catch ball was played by both sex's the Ball made out of kangaroo hide had to be thrown and caught by other players before it hit the ground sometimes referred to as Kangaroo play .

Stick and stone was a game between five opponents on each side with heavy sticks and stone as a ball the stone , one team had to throw the stones at the other team and they had to intercept it with their sticks.

Spin ball was a ochre painted cooked clay ball that resembled a top and the person was awarded points for keeping it spinning the longest .

Skipping ropes made from vines and long roots were used by many tribes but it wasn't swung in a circle but from side to side.

The whirler or whirring stick was a flattened piece of Gidyea 4 inches long with a hole in the end for a long cord and the spinning through the air creating the whirring noise. Sometimes it was carved out of bone and engraved and used at ceremonies and also kept as Love charm and in this case was kept out of sight of women.

Top Picture :Comparisons from Mt Morgan sub fossil I say ancient mans Pelvis lobes Mt Morgan left Port Alma right and Lower picture probable ancient mans ribs from peat Bogs Port Alma.

Some of the artifacts are more finer made than recent flake offs such items as perfect pyramids and spindle spear heads were found beyond the burial ground area Newman oval, the area seem to be just one massive tool making factory.

One can wonder that some would be studs for clubs or graving stones also for sharpening the ends of sticks for simple spears.

The stone studs for Clubs came in all sizes, too manufacture an item this small would require better vision than most of us normal people have today. From books I have read I have discovered their vision was as good as 50:1 where normal Caucasian vision is 20:1. Aboriginal People can not only see the Kangaroo nearly a mile away they could tell you if it had a joey or not.

One seed grinding stone lower left the others some I am a bit confused in what some of the square ones were used for, unless also seed grinding there is no way that stones fall into these patterns under normal erosion situations.

Could the spindles been a spear traded to the coastal people close by in the mid Paleocene or been an item for the production of fire?, Commonly used were wooden spindles into soft flammable wood maybe the sprinkle of Grasstree resin which has a high ignition point a stone spindle would have been more efficient. Being a place of very little flint rock that some communities had to strike together as a spark produce they would have been reliant on the spindle system.

An Rockhampton Aboriginal elder told me these items were spear heads that is the same use as in northern Europe, then we have the stone balls were they a toy or object to produce other things?.

This type of stone working was showed to me by a friend down the road in an 40,0000 yr old artifact he found in Europe.

One can see the exactness of the side chipping of the rock in the pattern one could only expect this to be done by a person with extremely good eyesight.

Glass would have been chipped of using a much softer type hammer like wood or bone.

Magnified views of ancient chipping on rock the first picture above to chipping of glass artifacts

Glass artifacts mainly all from area behind Mt Morgan Railway station exposed when river restoration was done. It is not one is a lazy archaeologist but opportunities as erosion and man made exposure does help in the process of finding information and artifacts

Mouth tool

small glass cutting tool

Glass with the multiple cut edge does not happen this way with straight ordinary breaking it must be chipped down from a flat edge like the stones artifacts were sharpened but usually a piece of wood or bone was used as the striker again good eyesight was the factor in such neat strikes to keep splitting the edges.

Glass spear tip

Fossil Crinoids and Brachipodia very similar ones from Port Alma shale's. These fossils are all in no eroded condition which one can assume straight away there had not been a river run over this land when Ancient Man was here using the rocks as artifacts unlike the situation today . These rocks now exposed only rarely last a year under today's conditions of weathering by wind and water and now the corrosive acids left by mining and leaking town septic runoff .

More fossil crinoids most rocks in Dee river metamorphic mud stones and a lot just Brachipods of different periods and different size to that of bowling ball. Fossils on these rocks are sometimes in pristine condition meaning no erosion, this was not previous river ground as it is now. The fossils were meant to give some sort of character and personal brand to the tool. I could imagine women and men chipping the stones to make the next days spear heads and the child was playing around being annoying so the person chips of a piece of rock with fossil or strata design and give it to the child as a doll or other toy to keep them amused or the same items would be used to tell stories during rest and recreation times.

Large Brachipodia Dee River would have made the perfect grinding stone.

Fossil Brachiopoda Enchinsolia a good condition exactly same species in granite and as found in Port Alma Brine's.

Finger print fossil of brachipodia enchinsiolia seeing it is in pristine condition as it is obvious of lack of river erosion till now back in the time of the tool making the land much higher than today river system.

To me this one looks like half a small crab, lot of small crabs dominate Port Alma fossils.
As trace fossils like bryozoans and perfect enchinsolia fingerprint fossils exist on some of the softer shale's once higher land than today.
I believe population of the Aboriginal people was at it's peak before the coming interglacial a large highly advanced civilisation and its decline came with lesser food from cold conditions wiping out vulnerable species then cam a change in some of the design of the tools and artifacts as food was to be dug and sort of a Permaculture like existence was sought after by each tribe as they had separate diets compare to position in tribe and breeding was much controlled as not to over stock the tribe with excess people the land could not provide. They had many beliefs of those similar to early European peoples with religion and Ceremony.
http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/objects-through-time/essays/50000-years-before-present/attachment/map-of-ice-age-aust/

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/100k.html

Back some one million to 40,000 years ago the time of the mega fauna most continents round the world were still joined at low tides by small islands and the area of land mass was much bigger obvious the mega beast was partly put on the edge of extinction by the Aboriginal People as were other mega beast in other parts of the world, The ancients were a much larger people and had more sophisticated tool making skill as the spindle-type spears found in the Dee river. I believe the entire human race was inter connected with large civilisation much similar to Mayan culture in some aspects. The rise and decline of Oceans caused by waxing and waning interglacials caused floods then dried out oceans creating droughts all species declined and many ancient skills were lost as was the huge animals for food.

The presence of grinding plates and stone's are evidence that grass seed was harvested for flour there is always denial that Aboriginal people carried out any agricultural practises. On early settlement there had been large numbers of people observing the natives harvesting in large amount of Yams and Onion grass. Peter Latz a Central Australian Botanist who grew on on Hermannsberg Mission observed the process of harvesting of onion grass where he describes the parallel trenching and turning over of the soil in the process as being important to the culture of the future crop of plants. When Thomas Mitchell explored along the Darling river in 1835 the scene reminded him of a hay field the grass's had been harvest into hay stacks for miles . The seed were shaken of winnowed and ground into flour and baked as bread in the ashes.
King on the doomed Burke and Wills expedition describes a grain store that would have held 4 tons of Nardoo Seed. John Davis on one of the search parties for Burke and Wills describes huge amounts of nardoo grass waiting for harvested on the dry lake floor Coogiecoogina in the Strzelecki Desert where the white settler has not been able to carry on any agricultural practises.
Howitt on another search party for Burke and Wills also describes large granaries of nardoo seed. Early settlers on the Mulligan river in North Queensland witness huge amounts of nardoo being harvested and an Explorer and Drover not keen to credit Aboriginal people had found two granaries one with a ton of rice seed stored in 17 large dish's commenting such delicious grain and taking only a small amount he wished he had taken more.

The main part of my Museum collection of Aboriginal rocks from a few areas around Central Queensland mainly the Mount Morgan area and Bajool area's.

( Ceremonial stones ) my belief is they were not so nomadic as some books say. I believe more small village type people among the rich forest that gave them all food and tools. They kept in touch with most nearby tribes which they inter-married to stop stagnation of the blood lines and had a regular trade in food and tools. They maintained the plants that gave them food and medicine some still today have the rocks around which probably not only provided shade for tool making in the heat of the day but a mulch to keep the roots of the tree's drying out .

This rock maybe a marker stone but it also looks like a tool to hold other rocks or wood for carving maybe some sort of primitive vice.

My Theory is that during the Miocene and food was plenty with such large animals even the Aboriginal man himself was big maybe up to 7 footin height. The lived in large communities with maybe some stone building structures where the resources was readily available. Marker Stones marked the different Trading points in tools artifact and probably food along mainly the coast and water courses. There is plenty evidence in Victoria of aboriginal people farming eels and smoking them in large amounts probably some for trade.

In my walking over the land and a lot of cleared land for cattle nowadays I find all different rocks in geological for but the sharps are identical now the hardness and monoclinc natural cleaving by weathering would be different for each types of rock structure , as a Geologist would think but seeing they are all the same and lots of axes among them then there is not many rocks on this land of Australia that hasn't been walked over or used as Artifact factories by earlier Aboriginals.

Upper Jurassic wood artifacts club stones from ranges NW of Mt Morgan township

All these rocks have come from what I regard as Miocene habitation strata level Mt Morgan , but there is evidence of different sea levels in the Holocene a lot of land was flooded that was previously in inhabited and large populations would have died from starvation if not the flooding. With the majority of the population gone so would have most of the skills for cutting rocks so perfect. it would have been just find rock shear enough of to produce a sharp for axe or spear and go hunt. this would have been a situation for many generations till communities got back together in tribes and learnt communicate and trade again between each tribe.

These Oysters came from deep sediments with the fossil deer other middens occur high in mountains NE of the town now an oyster has only a shelf life of a day so unless it was just shell traded from a coastal tribe then it it would indicate the ocean was not very far away at such period of time probably just at the base of Upper Ulam the edge of the Range. Larger middens of shells are know to exist in the hilly areas close to the man made Cave area.The only time the Ocean has been close to this area within human possible habitation times was the late Pleistocene the time of megafauna.

I have had people say they could be from the early township well my argument is there why are they all in the Dee and none in any other dumps I have excavated round the town was there an oyster processing works on the river well I have never heard of such a thing. Some people in this world are not convinced you can find something old because they have never.

Maybe it it just me but I see so much creativity in the items the made that there must have been an inner harmony some of us will never get to experience. The Brachipodia middle in the last Artifact just seem to well placed to be there without meaning.

Ochre stones which used for marking other stones and paints another part of their creativity pastimes .

There was at time lots of time for Play and Entertainment Interaction among the Families of the Tribes it makes some of us in today's Western societies all look like a bunch of introverts.

One has to wonder about these items found under the Dee river sediments were they just parts of homemade bricks made sometime back in the 1900's or parts of Cor-quine, ancient sediment that has gone to rock and been cut this way as artifacts there is evidence of uneven percussion chipping on the one right . Did the aboriginal people have more advanced brick and clay cooking skills than we really know?

Aboriginal communities were maybe only small after white man really inhabited Australia . there is no real research into the extent of in habitation prior or on arrival really white man was to busy exploiting the resource he had found for free all he bought was his stock of cattle that filled the aboriginal peoples waterholes with manure and stamped all their fruit trees into the ground. with them they had their Carbine which in those day was used readily on Aboriginal people because then they weren't recognise as a Human but rather Savages.

I have had people say to me the Aboriginals didn't use stone tools after white man arrived , which is a silly statement like the ships only bought need tools for themselves and convicts not Mitre ten shops with knives forks and spoons.

Most people think Australian bush is what it was on in habitation but this is not so most of the Forest now has been removed for mining, farming or timber harvesting . Even in my teens before the Brigalow scheme was up and running the Forest was extremely thick and tree's much larger than any Brigalow left today.

The size of the trees that were cut down for timber for the mine the river is littered with some stumps ever larger than this so Mt Morgan was prosperous Forest to the Aboriginal people, of which they still are dispossessed.
http://www.digthetropic.com.au/experiences/mineral-wealth/mount-morgan/

This may look mature trees but really is just regrowth once the top of this mountain Leyden's hill was cleared for timber and some small gold mining leases.

My studies from old Books has me to believe the Aboriginal society was a very complex they had not only religious beliefs but marriage was a lot of time arrange at birth and one had certain ceremonies to go though on the way of growing up before one could ever get to be with the girl one was promised to and their position was the an had to go steal away the wife from the Women sleeping huts and could get injured by the other women in the process sometimes ending in death.
One position and what one ate was all determined under a strict Hereditary set of rules not all of the tribe was allowed to eat all food maybe this was to assure the species of animals survived in big enough populations to keep producing.
As for was the marriage idea, a Child out of marriage was usually killed as to curb the carrying capacity of the tribe of people on the land that was available. Some men stole wives from other tribes if they weren't allotted to one or the elder men had stolen the women for an extra wife.
The child of an inter-tribal marriage was considered a lower person and given a special name they were restricted to food of that group of people. The Women in the tribe spent all the day roaming collecting food and socialising in groups with children frequently at waterholes, men went on hunts but it was never always successful the bringing home of meat for the Tribe. It is obvious that the tools of a lot of the coastal tribes were for grinding up seed for flour, vegetables and bush fruits consisted the majority of their diet. Protein was limited sometimes to Fish, Lizards or Wild birds they could trap with nets that were baited with fruits like figs .

The training and playing as a child made the me very efficient with a spear. My Father when I was a child took me spear fishing in the mangroves of creeks spearing the black bream and mangrove jack among the roots one had to nearly touch the fish with one hand and spear it with the other while waist deep in the low tide waters. Sometimes we out around rocky bays and found pools under rocks with the odd good size fish mainly small sharks and we always had abundant food to take home to the family.
Aborigines were skilled in producing yarn for lines and fish hooks out of certain fish's bones or carved shells. Harvesting the sea was was an effective source of food to feed large tribes as the tribe's in Bowen were around 500 to 1500 per tribe and there was numerous tribal areas most soils round coastal areas are eroded granite's low in nutrients to have a huge yam growing supply.
Turtle eggs and the odd turtle were obvious well sort after food items there would have been large populations of Turtles and Dugongs to attack on the low tide grassy sea shallows. But seeing the treat was only minimal because of the primate weapons against the hard shell and hide of the effect on populations would have been small and the amounts of turtle eggs collected would not of affected the populations either.
Food was always sorted by the elders on returning to the tribe. Some was obvious eaten by the collector while on their collection hunt but Older women always kept a sharp eye on the younger. Research Book / Living Stone Age.

Various plates and rollers for Grinding the wattle and other seed to flour. These originate from the Dee river around the Newman oval township area. This land is all previous Mining lease and under State and probably Federal Government law Aboriginal People cannot claim land that has been leased for mining purposes. Not sure if it is because it could be once again used for mining purposes or the fact these Government people actually believe mineral rich ground was of no purpose to the Aboriginal people as they did in the beginning of colonial times .
The Oldest known flour grinding stone found in Australia are some 30,000 years old found at Cuddie Springs New South Wales. reference Australian Nature 2005 edition.

Lilly Pilly a tree native to most parts of eastern Australian and a valuable source of vitamin c to Aboriginal people.

Beach Cherry Eugenia rewardiana a Lilly pilly mainly of Eastern Australian coastal areas a very sweet variety. This grew in the tropical scrubs and even along the salt spray areas of beach's not only providing food for the Aboriginal people but the bush turkey a much more better source of protein that was trapped in net traps baited with fruit.

Kennedania a native pea has a few varieties the seed was very edible when young and later when dried and was collected easily by the Women and Children on the food collecting trips. the seed was ground into flour with other grass seeds native hibiscus seed and provide high protein baked cakes. Large amounts of seeds were collected of any species at one time it was always good to have a constant supply food and this was regulated well by the Elders who probably had lived through many of a hard time.

Native currant was a hardy shrub of dry sandalwood areas lots of varieties it had a edible purple currant that was highly nutritious in Vitamin C , these sandalwood was the main environment for the native bee in the dry stony wooded areas of the Western parts of Australia.

Native Hibiscus has an edible flower and seeds , Flower would also be part of the Witch doctors medical kit as a medicine to settle upset stomach's and would have had excellent properties as covering for superficial wounds.

Sygium coolaminium a large purple much tarter tasting fruit but when ripe sweetness is found. They are highly rich in vitamin C and the tree's attracted the fruit bats and possums that were often hunted as a good source of protein.

Burdekin Plum this fruit comes ripe during the winter months providing the Aboriginal people with an even more strong source of Vitamin C .

These could be removed of their flesh and dried for a later food storage.

The bulb of the wild crocus was an onion like vegetable to the Aboriginal people that had to be cooked to be eaten to kill the light toxicity of the bulb.

Wild Mushrooms were always a wet season favourite and was likely to be consumed raw.

Wood fungi was a food in some cases could be pound to a powder and cooked but a plant that was used by the medicine man as a part of his treatment or pads for wounds.

The native Pitcher Plant had some uses for the medicine man as healing materials but it also had a root system that grew tubers which were of an edible nature.

Bottle Brush Melaleuca Family, tree flowers were always full of nectar and usually just popped in the mouth and sucked like a Popsicle.

The flower bush's were a place for the women to hang out and watch for native bees one they would catch and with tree gum stick a tiny piece of white grass and let it go so they could run after and track it to the hive. Native bees were abundant when I was a child my father was a good tracker of the bees and knew all the areas where there were hives. Native bees usually preferred the rocky ridge Casuarina and Sandalwood mixed treed areas .

When the Black Cockatoo came to the bush they knew it was time to go collect the Casuarina Seed which was ground to flour or just eaten raw they have an agreeable nutty taste. Seed pods collected and left to open on sheet of paper bark in the sun from the Casuarina trees would open in a few hours while they rested in the heat of the day in the shade.

The Noisy Curragong could be heard for miles telling the people that there were figs for picking.

Numerous types of native figs along the water course mainly would have fruited nearly all year around providing a source of sustenance and fibre to the diet, most were much more edible when a dark orange colour. Fig tree's would have been a place to trap birds also most Aboriginal people had the skill to plate hair into thread which was then manufactured into nets for tangling tree and water birds alike.

The female Bowerbird was a one to be caught in a well placed net.

Birds were a large part of the Aboriginal life in letting them know what foods were available where this flower was a source of nectar for Bird and Human. Silky Oak flowers were a luxury full of honey type nectar the timber was a straight hard wood would have made excellent spear wood.

When the Mountain Rosella's came down to the low lands to feed the Rainmaker would have had to advise the elders of the dry situations in the highlands.

When the parrots would come in flocks to feed on the large gum flower's good seasons were coming

Not long after the Mortian bay ash seeds were dispersed it was guaranteed to rain and if there were large amounts of seeds and Birds the Rainmaker would have been advisable to notify the elders of severe flooding rains coming. If the Mortian Bay ash did not seed or other gums were dropping their seed pods without producing seeds after flowering then there would be no doubt dry time to drought.

The Topknot pigeon would have been a source of protein much more than some of the other birds as it does venture to the ground to feed. This bird would have been an easy one to trap with nets and some well set seed as bait.

Now an emu egg would have been a challenge to get but would have been a good source of protein seeing the diet was regulated by ones status in the tribe not all would have been privileged to such food items.

Emu's were brought close to the hunter with a decoy noisy horn made out of piece of hollow Coolibah tree (Eucalyptus microtheca) rubbed down on stone till it was thick as cardboard one end was stoppered with a piece of Beefwood gum with a circular hole. The hole was blown across creating a noise that attracted Emu's from miles they were driven into a triangular mesh made corral type situation where they were clubbed. On the plains out west the practise of laying on the ground waving legs worked to attack single curious birds.

Freshwater lobster were numerous in water holes and easily caught with string and bit of net as a scoop.

At a small railway siding out west towards Emerald one had studied some holes in rocky ground that had probably started out as small waterholes to wandering Aboriginal people and in dry times got dug out each time a little deeper to eventually be able to permanent most of the time with a sizable population of Lobsters ( corchies)

Freshwater fish that are very few today like the Murray cod grew to a large as even I know as a child roaming the swamps round town with a fishing line and a box of matches one could easily catch a decent meal or more with a couple of fish. These small ones get washed over the Town dam's spillway and have to wait till the next flood to get them hopefully past the poison are of river if their hole doesn't dry up in the mean time.

The Bearded Dragon would have been much fast .

The water hens were a easily trapped in net type of bird as they sent more time climbing over reds and bush than the average duck. Water fowls and ducks were driven by the throwing of returning boomerangs into a net covered narrow passageway near water holes at dusk.

The Swans would have wished to always be safe in deep water.

Candle Nuts ( Aluerites moluccana ) as I know them were not an edible nut but a nut that when dry provided a fire source for light at night and a way of transporting fire from one location to another some smouldering nuts were laid on some sand on a paper bark container and carried to the next campsite. The bark of the base of tree was ring barked by Aboriginals to encourage their large favourite edible white grubs.

When the Melaleuca paperbark was in flour it was a haven for the small native bee a time to mark one and follow it back to the hive which would only be around a kilometre away.

Paper bark trees Melaleuca were one of the most useful trees even though it did not produce food it did supply and emergency drink of fresh water by vertically splitting the bark. The bark had numerous uses from cooking to lighting fires and man made knife sheaths and belts.

Women were said to have plated the bark into carrying bags or used a kind of girdle made

out of the plated bark to carry a baby on the mothers hip and large sheets of bark made useful blankets and ground mats in cold weather along with cured skins of Kangaroos.

In cases of a fractured limb the affected area was lined and kept in place with twine and packed with antiseptic leaves of the Tea tree.

There was some type of basic medical care given by the Witch doctor he did have a reputation to keep, patients were usually care by totem relations or wife next to the Witch Doctors camp.

Gunya huts were lined with sheets giving a waterproof place for stormy nights. Gunyas were more of a lean to situation the Mia mia huts were more intricate made circular huts with flexible bent over branches a foot apart and tied together with twine then intertwined with bark with a hole that could be covered in the centre for the outlet of the smoke from the fire lit in the hole in the centre floor. Sheets of paper bark could be used as portable throw away raincoats. Nowadays most of the large paper bark trees have gone from the bush though in the 1950's and 60's in NSW a company harvested 400 tons of bark annually exported and used as stuffing in pillows and mattresses.

For cooking and boiling water a bark lined hole was made the sand full of water and a hot rock from the fire was added. One is sure there was sufficient Mussel shells of large size that were used as cups or spoon type utensils.

I am sure before White man's destruction there would have seen much larger pieces of trees to harvest I have seen some with trunks nearly a meter in diameter up behind the now Mt Morgan dam area so it must have been some permanent reservoir there.

Tea tree oil type Melaleuca come in a lots of different types the Leaves were used a hand wash or tea in time of illness, the flowers a good source of nectar and place to watch for bee's to follow back to their hives. The tree's back in subtropical times might have grown in brackish water and also made the water stained but the bark if split length ways would provide a small amount of water for of drinkable quality for at least two people and the leaves were good fire lighters very high in flammable oils. T-tree leaves would have been part of the witch doctors source of item used to heal ailments crushed and lined inside paper bark to heal wounds.

Gumb Gumbi or Pittsphorum phyliodes was a medicine tree and it has been written in some books that the women used the tea as birth control in dry and arid times it did not really prevent birth but bought on an abortion. The chemicals in the leaves are a strong blood thinner so it has me a bit confused what the men used it for . The bark was useful bashed with producing a soap like substance which could have suffocated small fish .

No doubt early Temperate Australia had many a permanent water holes a source of mud Mussel, Tortoise and Fish if one was lucky to catch and even the humble Lilly had edible stems and roots.

Even when I was a child there was many a permanent flowing creek and lots of swamps but over grazing and farming now mining has stripped all the goodness from the earth. Our Children inherit but the Ashes of our greed and yet we deem ourselves more civilised than past civilisations.

Acacia Longifolia one of the many edible wattle's used to make flour, only two of all the wattles in Australia have poison in the seed and they are found in New South Wales some of the wattles made excellent spears and some springy steel hardwood for axes and picks.

Hickory wattle or Spearwood was the most sort after wattle it can grow long straight hard timber the seed also very edible and in great quantities when the season is right. We could not compare seasons today with yesterday and say they were one least bit similar even in my lifetime I have seen many a permanent water source disappear due to overuse and over clearing of vegetation.

Acacia littorallis is a prolific seed bearer one of most edible of wattle seeds a very peanut like taste seed would have been collected on animal hides and crushed on the rocks and cooked as cake's very high in protein food for one season of the year though they have been know to continual seed in continual wet times.

Bottle tree or Brachychiton species, the seed was a useful source of flour and the young trees had very edible roots and dry times the tree was sometimes tapped for water.
Large bottle tree's referred to as Kurrajong named after the Aboriginal word were useful fibre plants for them the fibrous bark was used in the process of making nets. Fibres were made from everything from hair that was collected on a regular basis .the women were very patient and good vision used to weave large nets and ropes.

Corkwood or bat wing coral tree ( Erythrina vespertilio) was a medicinal tree its bark could be crushed and used to suffocate small fish or the leaves as a tea was used to bring on sleep and sometimes visions by the men in the tribe. Women were not usually allowed to drink this as would promote abortions. Large Corkwood trees in all book references was the preferred wood used to make shields it was strong but easy to carve. The orange bean seeds were collected by the children and adults and drilled with holes and worn as colourful ceremony necklace.

The Corkwood flower was a sleeping medicine of the Witch Doctor and also for personal decoration for corroborees.

Another tree regarded as Pituri Corkwood (Dubosisia hopwoodii )

was an important tree to to the Aboriginal people it's foliage was used to poison waterholes and stupefy emu's thus rendering them easy to kill. They prised it as a drug the leaves and twigs were ground and either chewed or smoked . Being one of the Solanacae plant family this plant had certain poisons and nicotine was one of them.

Long leaf emu bush and pituri corkwood grew together the emu's were fond of the sweet berries as would have been the children.

Alpistonia excelsor usually only a small shrub exhibits soap like effects with it leaves crushed in water. Large amounts could suffocate fish or it could be used as a wound cleanser by the Witch doctor. The seed was a Witch Doctor medicine once crushed into a powder and given to settle stomach conditions these had very little toxicity they were later used by the settlers with the leaves as emergency stock food.

Quinine berries were also one of the witch doctor's medicine tree's the powder of the seed and pods has a fever reducing properties also could be end up being poison in large doses.

It was later used by the Settler's as a cure for malaria which came with the Chinese and other Oriental miners which there were many of around Mt Morgan.

Many of the knife leaf wattles like Acacia aulacarpa , Spear wood was utilised for Nula nula and spear making it's springy steel like wood could have been easily sharpened on the end with a graving stone to a spear point without the need to attach a stone. The lumpy notch where it branched was rounded and would have been a iron hard end for a fighting club even without decoration by stone studding.

Eucalyptus Eserta of peppermint gum is one of the oiliest gums around the area, the steam of the leaves made a disinfectant for time's of septic initiation ceremony mishaps.

The Grass tree was a useful firelighter the leaves are extremely flammable and the were set alight to promote the production of red lumps of resin at base which was used as tool making cement, incense at ceremonies and medicine. As a medicine the sap has antiseptic qualities and if crushed to powder would be used to help heal small wounds.

The production of resin was easy to manipulated by scaring the base and setting alight of the upper flammable dead leaves. The gum was used as a glue from hold the stones in the clubs to spearheads hafted in the long strong wattle branches.

One could see this Resin because of its colour and perfume given of when alight being as a big part of their ceremonial life would have been an important element of the Witch doctors medicine chest. The crushed resin would have been used by the witch doctor to throw in the fire to get an explosive effect and strong intoxicating perfumed smoke and was very much an ceremony accessory.

The Macrozamia miquili has toxic seed, these I think they might have been used as a food source in hard times as there is knowledge of them being crushed to fine powder and soaked clean usually left in dilly bags in running water to clean it of the soluble toxins. These were exploited by the first settlers the leaves because of their cyanide content gave the cattle rickets and the bulbs were dug up en mass and also crushed to make commercial starch for washing and ironing.The Plant despite it's spines it produces a fine fluff fibre around the flowers which had useful padding purposes and string production.The long leaves produce a fibre that was strong and plated into dilly bags and rope's

Cycads have the same toxic properties of cyanide in the seeds and most parts of the plant and were also relied on as washed form of starch staple food to much of the plant in a person's diet would have detrimental effects especially in the time of settlement when the water supply relied to soak the seed of their toxins was already toxic from mining pollutants and township stock excrement not suitable for consumption but what choice did the people have.

Areas of green grass was promoted by burning of small areas at a time to encourage the feeding of Kangaroos and Wallabies. The warriors were thinking organised groups that knew the right time mainly winter or the wetter months to burn areas they needed for ceremony or bringing the kangaroos out of the tree's for fresh grass.

It was much like having the farm close to home

My theory is that bush was much more dense in the days past and branches grew much straighter and any joint in the tree would have been closer together making it perfect spears in the latter stone holding apparatus in the joints and the nearly 90 degrees pattern in some of the rock items is for backing against the timber of the joint or groove cut in wood for spear.

This place was built in the late 1800's as a power station and it seems and Gold, assay location Aboriginal people were still living along this part of the river taking advantage of the weir that was built for water extraction by the power station and in their spare time sorted what then would have been twice as toxic if not 10 times as today the Assay works dump. This would have some really adverse health effects bring on surly early death of some individuals.

Glass Items carved out of the glass ingots that were thrown away in the 1890s Mine dump acid.
I had found lots of evidence of Aboriginal people in this old dump even after nearly 100 years the ground is very toxic today and one can't spend no longer than an hour at a time near it what was the health effects of this toxic mess back in the days of dumping on the people then that would have sorted it for anything useful and those that carved the furnace glass into ornaments for top of clubs.
This use of ornament then sort of disproves the fact that early Aboriginal people showed no interest in Gold and Gems therefore they would not miss them from their lands. The Aboriginal People knew where all the gold nuggets were in Mt Morgan that they traded for meagre food supplies it was not the fact their eyesight was better at spotting such items it was the knowledge that they were located at such a place.

All materials for even their frugal shelters was taken of the land and sleeping in the open in all weather situations would have come the norm.

White man's presence of cutting down tree's was a mortal crime to some early Aboriginal people as they believed their spirits of their belated had gone there and many an Aboriginal was shot for the spearing of a man white man chopping down a tree.
Large amount of artifacts were made from glass waste of invading white man, who had quickly came and cleared the land to find gold and feed stock taking away the Aboriginals people's rich vitamin diet of bush foods and supply of clean water holes.
I have noticed a large areas of artifacts at the edges of first settlement areas in Mt Morgan large amounts of glass artifacts with few of old rock version were uncovered by cleaning of Dee river behind the old Railway station long river bank and downstream Newman oval these areas which also mined by China man during the early gold days of Mt Morgan Chinese were ostracised with the Aboriginal people being not European.
Two areas of slag iron and some slag glass artifacts exists but there must be more main one is down near Mundic Gully back in the 1800's Mt Morgan actual town was on mountain behind. Mundic gully old rock foundations of the terraces the houses were built on still remain today as do the dumps of the Hotel bottles and most these dumps have presence of worked glass artifact items. My view of the amount of work they did with iron at the Mundic gully site is that they were still numerous in numbers to do such an amount of work and they were still very much large people as some of the long rocks carved are heavy to lift.

I can assume their numbers might have dwindled as to having to rely on more toxic food of the Cycad's which they had to process by washing the toxins out in the river water which was polluted with mine waste in areas. The forest around the area was all cut down to provide timber for the mine and one is sure that koala's and possums, sugar gliders even honey bee's all which inhabited these forest were one of the people's principle foods. While the area was heavily forested the Aboriginal people would still had shellfish from river mining of the river system would have killed the mussels out. All parts of the river was mined and mercury was commonly used to amalgamate the gold particles by Chinese and other miners.
Living along the river while the mine was operating they would have been exposed to a more toxic environment that that it is today lead sulfates and cyanide ash would have been still more active and reactive probably leading to many health concerns weakening their immunity defences more to be prone to white man diseases.

Interesting 250 million yr brachiopoda fossil shell artifact Dee river behind Newman Oval, Mt Morgan.
Most the rock there is siltstone or metamorphic mudstone it is hard to work into fancy spears but because of the rocks monoclinc structure it was good for working down to flat surfaces.

One had found some of these items first like the Oyster, one does not think it is odd to find oysters but the quantity is the thing Bivalve, gastropod and the stemmed coral one still thought just town refuse but after find this Bryozoan coral 2015 I am now convinced that these items are no longer town rubbish but sub fossils from the past Paleocene period when the Mega fauna were in existence and some parts of the ocean were not too far away. There has been hundreds of oyster's shells and an oyster would only last fresh for one day or a bit more depending on how cool it was kept. That could give some indication that the beach was only a day's walk away in my fittest times I have know to walk some 30 ks in a day and I had water to carry. That sort of distance could make the ocean just at the bottom of Ulam range.

Bryozoan stemmed coral could be least 65 million years old

Type of Fenstilena Bryozoan coral these items were most like trade items with a close coastal tribe.
http://museumvictoria.com.au/discoverycentre/infosheets/marine-fossils/corals/

250 million year fossils lot of Brachipodia and a Belimite in metamorphic mudstone.

Otozamites a Clubmoss from Upper Carboniferious area in range near caves

Baiera sphenobarera, Clubmoss

Similar Clubmoss's

Photo's -All type's of Pecopteris club moss fossils on small axes and other artifacts. Carboniferous to upper Triassic true ferns that have twined fronds of foliage for leaves. grew in fertile soil conditions. Fossils are found among the shale's in the ranges near the recent man made caves for clay mining re brick making the Mine. and the area where the Plesiosaur are located. this was most likely evidence of a huge freshwater lake than part of the larger oceans of the time. These have been donated to me, I would say like other donated stones from people I have know they are usually artifacts sometimes I have often told them but they are sceptics and usually doubt me and say chance fractures. People have just found them like this on the ground not any excavation then been broken previously and some have sharp edges and evidence of multiple breaking .

Lignite from the Dee Sediments one can sort of claim it is before previous settlement as it more stone than wood and has an hand axe shape. The river sediments being Devonian tonalite mudstones mainly sediment-ed shellfish lots of Cast fossil brachipods that undergone different stages of metamorphism when filled with different sediments of the time one is surprised to find lignite thought it was further under in the period of time strata and it has the basic 1/2 Brachipod cast fossil shellfish shape.
Another possibility it was brought there from another tribe up in the hills one does find a a lot of petrified wood in river sediments from the hills.

Fossil wood marker stones and hammer rocks Mt Morgan Range near man made caves for clay where Dinosaur footprints were found from the Upper Carboniferous.

Dendrites on club rock a moss like structure crystal formations of minerals that grew through ancient rock when it formed .

Brachipodia Spirifer and Pectin shell on club stones. one would think these rocks with fossils on them were only ceremonial items as there is never much damage to the rocks or fossils but the majority are on some sort of artifact.

Trilobites on rocks from Mt Isa area . http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/aboriginal-stories-of-sea-level-rise-preserved-for-thousands-of-years-20150213-13d3rz.html

Pictures from Book Our Living Stone Age Ion L Idriess Angus and Robertson published 1963

Tribe was usually ruled by the Elders to Tribal law and the Dreamtime Spiritual traditions and policed as we could say by the fully initiated Warriors.

European Settlers and his animals were just to alien for some of the Elders of tribes to accept one can understand their anxious behaviour first contact would have been a worrying time.

Life of the Aboriginal women was one of servitude to the tribe as much was the warrior, days were spent collecting food that they only got a share of some were multiple wives of the Elders who were known to have sometimes up to three wives. They spent their younger lives with their parents till initiation times where their Totem aunts and Uncles would look after them and teach them the law of the tribe.They were kept separate from the men at night their was no sex life till marriage to their already determined Warrior. The Warrior spent most of his day hunting game part to pay the price of looking after his future bride who was sometimes only a child.
Children were given birth at a birthing place near some permanent water hole, totem aunts and other women took them to this place at the first sign of birth.
As with ceremony places there was laws of restriction and only women were allowed this place men were taboo considered bad luck if ever to venture during any ceremony.

Women were highly skilled at climbing tree's a skill they learnt from a very young age sometimes a small axe was used to cut a foot hold place but very often need as their ability to run up and down tree's was an inborn trait from many millennium of Stone-age life.

Women with their agile tree climbing chasing Possum, tree kangaroo, koala, goanna, tree snake, tree frogs, flying fox supplied children carrying bags or trays on the ground. Some women carried shoulder dilly bags with little paper bark bags carried combs of honey while children carried paperbark receptacles tied together at each end with eggs of wild ducks and swan.

Ornamental dressage was a common, their imagination with available resources was an important part of their life to celebrate the natural world around them and to be part of it too play out stories to each other from elements of their spiritual past.

Ceremony and the meeting of the tribes was a common custom usually held in the good seasons of spring when rains had replenished the streams allowing the people to travel long distances.

Warriors were known for their Ceremonial scaring to make themselves the strongest looking of men for their promised wives who in turn had themselves look strong for the brave Warrior.

Women mostly subjected themselves to ceremonial scaring to look the strongest in the western tribes where the practise of initiation was more prevalent than coastal tribes it was part of their indoctrination as growing up that the tribe had to work as an efficient unit to ensure the survival of all. It was part of some need to be much more stronger because of the much harsher conditions than that of the coastal tribes and also the fact the coastal tribes were more flexible with their territories and there was more movement among the tribes so there was time's when the tribe was not always together as an organisation to have set ceremonies.

Women and men with always adorned with ceremonial scars which made them proud and the strongest looking.

Young men did a lot of hunting but not all hunts were a success most time they relied on what the women had collected which was distributed among the tribe by the elders. Most tribes had their own totem food distribution system the hierarchy of who got what part of the daily collection to eat. One notices in all the first settlers picture of Aboriginal people all were healthy strong looking individuals. The organisation, collection and storage of food for future use is hardly ever recognised as an important factor in most studies of their lifestyle with the emphasis being on art and ceremony. It was long thought that they only lived from day today with food but some studies prove that is a fallacy.

http://editor.nourishedmagazine.com.au/articles/australian-aborigines-living-off-the-fat-of-the-land

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2015/ancient-human-fossils-from-laos-cave-demonstrate-early-human-diversity

One can argue that if Humans were so diverse up to 63,000 years ago the Aboriginal tribes were already living on the low now under water parts of the Australian coastlines and not just getting here at the 40,000 time period as most Historians only say

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2015/03/aboriginal-australian-inventions

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-distinct-artwork-contact-period-regions.html

First contact was reflected in the artwork and detrimental to art resources.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/indigenous-australia-the-land

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~mmichie/engag_games.htm

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