PROLOGUE: FOR WANT OF A YAM

Lands of Red and Gold #0: First Contact

February 1310
Tasman Sea, offshore from Kiama, Australia

Blue sky above, blue water below, in seemingly endless expanse.  Dots of white clouds appeared on occasions, but they quickly faded into the distance.  Only one double-hulled canoe with rippling sail cut a path through the blue emptiness.  So it had gone on, day after day, seemingly without end.

Kawiti of the Tangata [People] would very much have preferred not to be here.  The four other men on the canoe were reliable enough travelling companions, so far as such things went.  Yet being cramped on even the largest canoe made for too much frustration, and this was far from the largest of canoes.  Only a fool would send out a large canoe without first exploring the path with a smaller vessel to find out what land could be discovered.

Of course, only a fool would want to send out exploration canoes at all, so far as he could tell.  The arts of long-distance navigation were fading back on Te Ika a Maui [North Island, New Zealand].  That was all to the good, so far as Kawiti was concerned.  Why risk death on long sea voyages to find some new fly-speck of an island, when they had already discovered something much greater?  Te Ika a Maui was a land a thousand or more times the size of their forefathers’ home on Hawaiki, and further south lay an island even greater in size.  Their new lands were vast in expanse, and teemed with life on the earth, in the skies above, and in the encircling seas.

Still, here Kawiti was, on a long voyage like his grandfather had spoken about.  He had learned the old skills, and now he had been made to use them, whether he wished it or not.  He would much rather be hunting moa in the endless forests than chasing ghosts in this endless water.

“Remind me why I’m out here,” he said, to the air around him.

His cousin Nene took the statement seriously.  “Because Rahiri wants us to be out here, and so here we are.”

“If there’s exploring to be done, the Big Man should do it himself,” Kawiti muttered.

“That’s the point to being the Big Man; you get to tell others what to do, instead of doing it yourself,” Nene said.

Since that was manifestly true, Kawiti changed the subject instead.  “No matter what Rahiri wants, we can’t keep exploring much further in this wind.”

As any sensible navigator would do, Kawiti had steered his canoe into the wind for this exploration.  That would make it safer to run for home if they needed to, rather than risk being becalmed until they died of thirst.

“We have enough water to explore for another sunrise, maybe two,” Nene said.  “If-”

He never finished that sentence, since Kawiti pointed to the skies instead.  “Gulls!”

That brought exclamations from all of the men on the canoe.  A half dozen or so white-and-silver gulls circled in the skies to the south-west.  Kawiti took hold of the steering oar and turned the canoe in that direction.  Sure enough, when they got closer, they saw that the gulls were just like those which crowded the shores of Te Ika a Maui and flocked like so many winged thieves to the site of any moa kill.

Gulls meant land nearby, of course, as any child knew, yet what kind of land?  As the canoe swept south-west, Kawiti looked for the build-up of cloud which was often associated with islands.  He saw no low-lying clouds, just the same occasional high white puffs which had been their only company for days.  Yet the sky to the west did look different, somehow.  It had turned into a kind of blue-gray haze, instead of the usual blue.  Strange indeed.

When they went a little further west, Kawiti realised that he could smell something.  A striking, tangy odour unlike anything he had ever inhaled.  Piercing, somewhat sharp, not entirely unpleasant but most definitely unfamiliar.  Land had to be near, but what could produce such as a sharp smell to carry it over the horizon?

Soon enough, he had his answer.  The azure expanse of sea was replaced by an endless stretch of brown-green land in the distance.  It covered the entire western horizon, as they drew near.  Not a small island, then, rather something worth discovering.  Another new land, surely not as large as Te Ika a Maui, but worth visiting.

Trees grew near to the shore along this entire coast, it seemed, but Kawiti steered the canoe toward an open expanse of sand.  The canoe landed easily enough on the beach, as it was designed to do, and the men quickly dragged it up beyond the high-water mark.  No telling how long they would be here, and they could scarcely risk losing their only way home.

“Another island of forests,” Nene said.  “And smell those trees!”

Kawiti could only nod.  Those strange white-barked trees were the source of the odour which they had smelled even out of sight of land.  They looked tall, but they were more widely-spaced than he would have expected of a forest.  The ground between the trees was suspiciously empty, too.  A few shrubs grew here and there, with grass elsewhere.  Why hadn’t those bushes grown to cover all the ground between the big whitebarks?  There was light enough for them to grow, surely.

“We need to find water,” he said.  No stream or spring was obvious, but there had to be something.  There was always water somewhere.  “And somewhere to camp.  And then-”

A strange man seemed to step out of the ground, making Kawiti forget his instructions.  A man with skin black as night itself, who had somehow concealed himself well enough that neither Kawiti nor anyone else in his crew had noticed him.  The man held a spear in his hand, although he pointed it at the ground rather than Kawiti and his fellow Tangata.  The black man rattled off a few words in a speech which made no sense whatsoever.

Kawiti held his right hand, face up, to show that it was empty of a weapon, then said, “We mean no harm.”  The words would probably mean nothing, but at least his tone should sound peaceful.

The black man flicked his head upward, as if biting at his own earlobe.  A gesture of frustration, or something else?  No way to know, not in this strange land.  The black man wore some sort of woven cloth around his waist which went halfway to his knees, and had a head-dress of gray-brown feathers covering black, curly hair.  The black man spoke again, more loudly, in words which sounded slightly different to his previous speech, but just as meaningless.

Softly, Kawiti said, “No-one raise any spears.  There’s five of us, and only one of him.”

“Two of them, at least,” Nene said.  “I’m sure I saw someone else back there behind the trees.”

The black man looked from one of them to the other, then thumped the butt of his spear on the ground.  More black men appeared from behind trees or stood up from behind bushes which by rights were too small to conceal anyone.  The other strange men came to stand beside their fellow, moving quickly but not running.  They all had spears of some kind or another, and the same night-coloured skin, but there the similarities ended.  Each of the men was dressed differently.  One had a feathered cloak wrapped around him, another wore the hardened leather skin of some animal about his chest in what had to be some kind of armour.

One man, apparently the leader of the black men, had a round shield attached to his left arm.  Not made from wood, as a few of the Tangata used, but some kind of strange substance that was yellowish-brown, and which gleamed.  It looked harder than any wood, but obviously lighter than stone, from the way the black man held that shield.  Belatedly, Kawiti realised that each of the black men’s spears were tipped with heads not of stone, but of the same yellow-brown substance.  Those heads did not have the same shine on them, but they still looked strong.

Who were these strange men?

--

August 1619
Western Coast of Australia

Commander Frederik de Houtman stood on the deck of the Dordrecht, beneath stars which always struck him as unfamiliar.  Even though he had named some of these southern constellations himself, in his voyages of half a lifetime ago, he still found them strange to this day.  In the moonlight, the coastline was only a murky shadow on the eastern horizon, but its shape filled his thoughts.

For several days he had watched the shore here.  It appeared so inviting, yet he had been unable to land.  The roughness of the seas meant that he did not dare to let the ships go closer, not even to launch boats - if any boats would survive that treacherous surf.  If his ships had not been so heavily laden with goods due in Ambon, he might have risked venturing closer.  As it was, he could only wait, and consider.

He did not wish to delay for much longer, but he was intrigued, and more than intrigued.  The southern route to the East Indies had only been in use for nine years, since Hendrik Brouwer discovered the strong winds in the southern latitudes, and reduced the sailing time by two-thirds.  With more ships taking that route, some of them were bound to overshoot and end up on the coast of this land.  His old friend Dirck Hatichs had been the first, and left an inscribed plaque on what he had privately called a “God-forsaken stretch of emptiness.”  Other ships had landed here since, and said much the same thing - but none of them had come this far south.

A few days before, he had found an island he named Rottnest, for the strange rat-like creature which lived there.  It hadn't been a true rat - it didn't look quite right - but it was close enough to name it that.  Of course, that had only been a small island.  This land, Terra Australis, the unknown great southern land, seemed to be much larger.  No-one knew what creatures lived here, but there would surely be many more than that little rat.  De Houtman wondered about them, but he had limits to his curiosity.  He thought for a moment longer, than decided that he would wait until morning.  If the seas had not calmed by then, he would give the order to turn north.  With that decision made, he retired below to some well-earned sleep.

The next morning, de Houtman came out on deck and looked at calm seas.  The wind had died down, although some remained to sail, and the ocean swell was mild enough for him to sail close without a guilty conscience.  He gave the order, and the ship came close into shore.  He raised a telescope to his eye and searched the new land.  He saw strange trees, some with white bark.  A flock of black birds flew above them.  Even through the telescope, he could not be sure, but he thought they looked like swans.

“Black swans?”  De Houtman had been trained in logic as a child, even if he spent most of his time daydreaming, and he remember Aristotle’s triumphant example of inductive reasoning.  The ship sailed closer, but the birds flew off, so De Houtman could only wonder.

He saw an inlet, or what might have been a river, and instructed the crew to sail into it.  They did so, and the ship sailed into what he would later call the Swan River, after his glimpse of the birds which, in due course, he discovered had indeed been black swans.

--

“Commander, we found something ashore you should see,” Pieter Stins said.

De Houtman looked up from his chart, shrugged, and gestured for the sailor to lead the way back to the boats.

“Ah, you might want to find yourself a musket first, sir.”

“Did you find people here?” De Houtman asked.  If so, the sailor should have told him at once.  If they found people here whom they could trade with, the East Indies Company would forgive almost anything, including late ships.

Stins went pale beneath his sunburnt skin.  “Not yet.  But there must be people about, somewhere.  Best if you see it for yourself.”

“Wait by the boat; I’ll join you in a few moments.”  He found another sailor, and gave a quick order.  “Send this message to the Amsterdam: Reports of strange people on land.  I am going ashore to explore.”  The Amsterdam, another one of the eleven ships in his expedition, was commanded by Jacob d’Edel, Councillor of the Indies, who despite his status had the sense to leave navigation to professionals like de Houtman.

After getting himself a musket, de Houtman took a boat with a few sailors and landed on the bank of the river.  Another group of a dozen sailors waited on the shore.  “Where are the people?” he asked.

Stins said, “Somewhere inland, I presume, sir.  Shall we go?”  The sailor gestured away from the shore.

“Not so fast,” de Houtman said.  “Load your muskets, men," he said.  The sailors did.  De Houtman offered a quick prayer of thanks that his men had wheel locks, not the old matchlock muskets some sailors still used.  He wouldn't want to face hostile natives while trying to light a fuse.

Just above the river, the low scrubs gave way to what had to be cultivation, although it looked little like any farmer’s fields he knew back in the Netherlands.  There were some scraggly areas of grass, but the field was dominated by a staggered series of sticks dug into the ground.  As they got closer, he saw that some of the sticks were forked branches, while others had smaller sticks tied across.  Vines had started to creep up the lower parts of the sticks, twirling around and extending dark-green leaves outward.  The vines had also started to spread along the ground, and were beginning to shade out the grass.

“Strange plants,” he murmured.  Grapes were the only crop he knew of that grew on vines, and these things did not look like grapes.  He wondered when they fruited.

One of the sailors said, “I’ve seen something like them which the natives grow in the Gold Coast [i.e. modern Ghana].  The roots grow large and sweet.  They call them... yams, I think.”

De Houtman nodded.  Whether these vines were yams or not – just because something looked similar did not prove it was the same – they were obviously quite important to the natives.  There were a lot of vines in this field.  And that wasn’t all.

“What are those trees around the edges of the fields?” he asked.  Two kinds of trees, now that he looked more closely.  The left and right edges of the field were marked with lines of trees that all reached to about nine feet tall, and had clearly been trimmed to keep them at that height.  What looked like a shorter line of trees – large shrubs, really – marked the far end of the field.  Those shrubs’ lower branches had trimmed to stop them touching the ground.  And the shrubs were in the early stages of flowering, with golden blooms emerging from many of the branches.

“Another strange thing, sir,” Stins said.  “The seasons are backwards hereabouts.  What kind of tree flowers in winter?”

“That one, I presume,” de Houtman said, allowing himself a touch of irony.  “Have you looked further inland?”

“Not much, sir.  There’s another row of fields.  Do you want to explore further?”

“Is the King of Spain a bastard?” de Houtman replied.  “But carefully.  The natives have to be here somewhere.”  Wherever they were, they didn’t seem to spend much time tending to these fields.  Or maybe it was just the wrong time of year.  Who could tell, with crops like these?

The party moved further across the fields.  A few brightly-coloured birds flew up from amongst the trees at the field’s edge, but de Houtman gave them little notice.  They reached a couple more fields, with more of the yams or whatever those vines were planted.  Each of the fields was lined with the same rows of pruned trees.

At the third field, one of the sailors called out, and gestured toward the nearest row of trees.  At de Houtman’s curt nod, the sailor went over and carried back a tool and a small woven basket.  The tool turned out to be some kind of spade, with a narrow iron blade beaten flat and attached to a smoothed wooden handle.  The basket held many small brownish-red winged seeds in the bottom.

Stins said, “Odd.  Why would the natives be planting seeds when their crops are already growing?”

“No way to tell, yet,” de Houtman said.  “May as well put the spade and basket back; no need to annoy the natives by stealing things from them.”

While the first sailor was returning the goods, de Houtman led the rest for a closer look at these strange trees.  The nearer trees had thorns on the branches.  The trees were carefully-pruned, too.  They had the look of something which had been shaped for harvest.  “They look almost like olives,” he said.  Well, the trees themselves looked nothing like olive trees, but they were pruned to a similar height and shape to what he had seen of olives in Spain during his one visit to that country.  Whatever fruit was harvested from these trees was probably gathered like olives, too.  And it was clearly valuable, from the way the natives had shaped these trees.

“Look up there, sir,” Stins said.  He indicated a hill rising above the fields.  It was covered in regularly-spaced trees and shrubs.  The eastern side, lit by the morning sun, had what looked to be the same kinds of trees as the thorny ones here.  The western side of the hill had the shrubs, and those were blooming golden.

“Beautiful flowers,” one of the sailors murmured.

“Never mind the flowers,” de Houtman said, although he thought that they were an impressive sight.  “Where are the natives?”  They had to be somewhere nearby, if they had these fields here.  “Muskets ready, men, and let’s go find them.”

De Houtman led the sailors further inland past the fields, looking for glimpses of the natives.

--

Marri, daughter of Yunupungu, had slept badly the previous night.  A twisted night, with whispering just beyond the edge of hearing; one of the kuru, perhaps, cast adrift by some waves in the great water’s eternity and trapped for a time on the dry mortal lands.  If so, and if the kuru kept her awake for too much of another night, she might have to visit the triangle-keeper and find out what he could hear.  Luckily, Sea-Eagle-Tree was a town whose triangle-keeper had not been carried away as tribute by some bearded Atjuntja warriors.

Or maybe it was her own spirit that was troubled; she had not dreamed last night, after all.  Not all nights need have dreams, of course, but still, their lack could be ominous.  If she had let her own spirit stray from the liquid harmony, then no amount of straining her ears for the whispers of kuru would prove useful.

For the morning, though, she could do nothing.  If there were a kuru, the light of the Source would have driven it to hide within the earth, lest its essence be evaporated and returned to eternity in a myriad of raindrops.  If the poor sleep was from her own troubled spirit, then she would have to find a new harmony, but that was not something that could be done in a single day, or even a week.

So, with cautious heart, Marri left town in the earliest hours of the day, to go about this day’s task of checking the yam-fields.  The Source had still not risen properly when she collected her shovel and basket of yam seeds and set out.  The first hints of golden light were just beginning to drive away the stars as she walked past the nearer fields, and true dawn had come when she reached the fields near the ever-ocean.

She started to walk along the rows of sticks in each field, checking for any yams which had died over the winter and not regrown with the spring.  She found none in the first field, which was a fortunate sign indeed.  She walked between the wealth-trees to the corner of the next field, and caught a glimpse of something which had appeared out on the ever-ocean.

Marri stashed her shovel and basket beneath one of the wealth-trees, and crept across the fields to find a vantage point where she could watch without being seen.  Two things had appeared out from the shore.  Things like gigantic boats created by the flow of the ever-ocean itself.  They had no space for oars, only what looked like an incredibly large tree growing out of the centre of each boat, with immense leaves of white rustling in the breeze.  Some kind of giant white-and-blue possum scrambled amongst the leaves, climbing down the tree.

Only then did everything snap into perspective, and Marri saw that it was a man climbing down amongst the leaves.  Then she saw that the boats must be a creation of men too, but much larger than any she had ever seen or heard of.  Not even the finest-masted boat that travelled the great storm roads to the south could compare to these giants.

After a time, a more normal-sized boat descended from the side of these monstrosities, with men aboard.  Marri moved slightly further back into the shrubs, trying to keep herself hidden.  The men rowed their smaller boat to the shore and then climbed onto the sand.  They were strange men indeed, with clothes of blue and white and with strange clubs of wood and iron.

The strange men started to walk inland toward the fields.  Marri shadowed them, as best she could.  She was no hunter born – that was the province of men – but she thought that she could still move more quietly than these stumble-footed strangers.  They were men, sure enough, but like nothing she had ever seen.  Beneath their clothes of blue and white, their skin was so pale, so raw.  Like men who had been served raw into the world rather than being baked by the Dreamers into a proper colour.

Raw Ones.  Yes, that was what they were.  But why had these Raw Ones come to these lands?

--

Lands of Red and Gold #1: Old Land, New Times

Consider, for a moment, the land which in certain times and certain places has been called Australia; smallest, driest, flattest and harshest of the globe’s inhabited continents.  Geologically, this is an old land, whose few once-high mountains have been eroded to mere stumps of their former selves.  Long ages of weathering have worn down the mountains and borne away most of the soils into the sea.  Lying mostly in the desert belts, this is a continent where the sun burns brightly and life-giving rains seldom come.

Life here would seem to be among the harshest on earth.  Save for a few of the northern extremities, where monsoons bring seasonal abundance, this is a land where water is scarce.  Even in those regions which are not desert, the rainfall is erratic.  Some times will see year after year of punishing drought, other times will see the rain fall so quickly that floods wash away ever more of what remains of the thin soils.  Every summer, the scorching heat brings the season of bushfires which sweep across vast areas of the continent, consuming everything in their path.

Yet despite the rigours and trials of this harshest of continents, it has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.  Aboriginal peoples have made it their home for millennia, adapting their lifestyles to suit the land, while also changing the land to suit their lifestyles.  They have not developed farming in a way which would be recognised in most of the world, but they have mastered the use of fire.  They have long burned the bush regularly in patterns which fit their needs, creating open woodlands and grasslands to feed the kangaroos which are their prime game animal.  The patterns of fire changed the nature of Australia’s flora, burning out some plants and encouraging others.  The towering, fire-loving gum trees will become the most well-known of these plants, but there are many others.  Regular burning encourages the growth of plants which store nutrients below the ground in the form of tubers, bulbs or tuberous roots, since these let the plants quickly regrow into land which has been fertilised by wood ash and cleared of competition.  Aboriginal peoples love these plants, since their underground stores are tasty, easily harvested, and a reliable source of food over most of the year.

For despite living in such a rigorous land, Aboriginal peoples have acquired the knowledge they need to survive here, and survive easily.  Fire-created grasslands and woodland allow them to hunt for an abundance of kangaroo.  If the hunt fails, one person can spend three or four hours digging for tubers and find enough food to feed a family for a whole day.

Yet for all their extensive knowledge of the plants of this land, the Aboriginal peoples have not developed a full farming society.  They manage the land in a manner which sustains their lifestyle, but they have not domesticated any of the native plants.  Writers have deemed that the indigenous Australian flora did not include plants with the necessary range of qualities to develop a native system of full agriculture.

Yet this need not always be so.

Consider the Murray River.  Fed by rainwater and snowmelt in the highest reaches of Australia’s remaining mountains, this river flows for 2500 kilometres until it empties into a complex system of lakes, sand dunes, saltwater lagoons and sand bars called the Murray Mouth.  The Murray and its tributaries drain a seventh of Australia’s land surface, making it by far the largest river system on this harsh continent.  Most of the basin is flat and not far above sea level, with the rivers that flow through them flowing slowly for most times of the year, except when rising in one of the irregular floods.  After extended droughts, the Murray has been known to dry up completely.

Yet by Australian standards, this is a well-watered land, the heartland of a region which is the breadbasket of modern Australia.  It held the same fertility since long before white men first visited this land where water means life.  The early white explorers who ventured along the Murray wrote of seeing acre after acre of wild yam-fields encouraged by Aboriginal peoples who burnt the land to suit these plants.  These peoples harvested the yam tubers for food, often leaving part of the tubers in the earth so that the plants would regrow and there would be more food next time.  In places, the earth was so full of holes from their digging that explorers found it too dangerous to take horses across.

Imagine now, for a moment, what could be if history were to be turned back and allowed to move in a new direction.  Look far enough back into the long-vanished past, and you might see a new plant arise along the Mighty Murray.  A new breed of yam, a plant much like its historical forebears, but whose qualities have altered in a few ways.  The most obvious change is that the white-yellow flesh of these yams has changed to red.  Their tubers grow slightly larger than their forebears, and the plants are quicker-growing, with larger leaves.  In time, this new breed of yam spreads throughout much of the Murray Valley, displacing the other kinds of yams which grow in this region [1].

This change happens long before the ancestors of the Aboriginal peoples arrive on Australia’s shores.  The newcomers reach this land at some time at least forty thousand years ago, when the sea levels are lower, and make landfall on a place which has now been concealed beneath the waves.  From here, they quickly spread out across the continent, in time reaching the Murray Valley where the red yams grow.  They quickly discover the value of the red yam, and it becomes one of the common plants they gather.

The time when the ancestors of the Aboriginal peoples arrive in Australia is a time of glaciers, lower sea levels and climatic instability.  Like humans across the rest of the world, Aboriginal peoples will maintain a hunter-gatherer lifestyle until the glaciers start to melt, sea levels begin to rise, and the climate enters a period of relative stability known as the Holocene.

In this new era, people around the world who are gathering wild plants create changes to many of them, in processes which will end in domesticated plants and independent origins of agriculture.  First among these will be in the lands which will later be called the Fertile Crescent, where an abundance of founder crops such as emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, peas, chickpeas, lentils, bitter vetch and flax means a very early development of agriculture.  Peoples in other parts of the world will develop agriculture independently, with the speed of their development related to how easily domesticable their founder crops are.  In China, in the New Guinea highlands, in Africa, the Andes, Mesoamerica and along the Mississippi, agriculture will develop independently.  In other regions, agriculture will spread from its first point of origin, until agricultural societies are spread around most of the globe [2].

Along the Murray, Aboriginal peoples make increasing use of the red yam.  Its large, nutritious tubers are a valuable component of their diet.  They harvest the yam tubers each year, and leave parts of the tubers in the ground to ensure that there is more food for next year’s harvest.  Slowly, they take control of its breeding, until with the passing of generations they develop forms of the red yam which are spread exclusively by human activity.  They have created Australia’s first domesticated crop.

--

[1] Introducing the red yam (Dioscorea chelidonius), a new crop for a new time.  Like most yams, this is a vine with a large, starchy, tuberous root.  The vine itself is a perennial plant, with well-established roots.  The above-ground portions of the plant often die back in winter, with regrowth in spring or after bushfires.  Like many related Dioscorea species, the red yam is domesticable.  Like a much smaller number of yam species (such as white and yellow yams from Africa), the red yam is also suitable as a founder crop, i.e. a plant which can be independently domesticated even in a region which has no pre-existing agriculture.  Founder crops are much rarer than domesticable crops; OTL Australia has plenty of the latter but none of the former.  Indigenous agriculture can’t get started without founder crops, no matter how many other domesticable plants may happen to be in a region.

For those who care, the particular mutation which has happened in red yams is polyploidy.  This is a kind of mutation where the entire genome of an organism is duplicated.  It is generally associated with lusher and more vigorous growth, particularly in domesticated (or domesticable) plants; many of the domesticated forms of wheat and bananas are polyploid, for example.  Polyploidy happens reasonably often, and it can create a new species in one generation, since a polyploid plant is not fertile with its parent plants or old species, but is fertile with other polyploid mutants from the former species.  There have been several documented instances of polyploid species arising in different regions and being fertile with the new polyploid plants from different regions, but not with their own parents.

Polyploidy is more likely to create new species in plants which can self-pollinate (like wheat) than in plants which have separate male and female plants (such as most yams), but it can still create new species if a male and female plant both turn polyploid in the same area, and if one fertilises the other.  The specific point of departure for Lands of Red and Gold is thus that two yams have turned polypoid near each other, fertilise each other, and create a new species.  Polyploid plants also often have other evolutionary advantages, since they have multiple copies of the same genes, which can evolve in different directions.  This will lead to a greater range of traits within red yams, when the time comes for them to be domesticated.

[2] While the point of departure for this timeline is far back in the past, Lands of Red and Gold also features an innovative “butterfly trap.”  This trap catches butterflies within Australia and doesn’t let them escape the continent until there is contact with the outside world.  So the cultures of Australia are considerably changed from OTL long before there is contact with the rest of the world, or even before domestication of D. chelidonius.  This is inevitable with the effects of a different plant species bouncing around the continent during the tens of millennia of human settlement of Australia.  So the Aboriginal peoples will have slightly different languages, slightly different belief systems, and so on.  But changes won’t be spread outside Australia until there is contact between peoples from the various continents.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #2: What Grows From The Earth

Stylistic note: Lands of Red and Gold is written in a variety of styles, which are mixed between posts and within posts at authorial discretion.  Most of the posts will be descriptions of the world of LRG itself.  However, there will also be considerable sections of the posts which provide relevant background information [1] to make sense of what’s happening in the timeline.  And sometimes to justify what’s happening, too, particularly in areas where there are some popular misconceptions.

--

Think not of the present time, but of an older era.  Step back in time, if you wish, to the time six thousand years before the birth of a man whom the world’s largest religion will credit with being divine.  Far from the place of this birth, in the continent which will much later be named Australia, live a great many peoples.  Long before the peoples along the Murray Valley discover how to make the earth bear regular bounties of red yams according to their needs, one other people have developed their own method of farming.  One that does not involve growing plants, but rather farming eels.

The Junditmara people [2] live in a region which in another time and place will be called south-western Victoria.  Their home country includes areas which were natural wetlands, but the Junditmara have transformed the landscape to suit their needs.  They construct stone dams and weirs across rivers and streams, creating man-made ponds and expanding existing swamps.  They dig channels through rock and earth to join the ponds and lakes into a complex system of waterways.  These waterways are naturally abundant in fish, but the Junditmara do not stop there.  From the nearby ocean, they catch young eels which they release into the waterways.  These eels grow for up to twenty years, and are then harvested in woven baskets which form eel traps.

The Junditmara have, in fact, developed a system of aquaculture.  The eel harvests are abundant and predictable enough to let them develop a sedentary lifestyle.  They have no need to move around in search of food.  With the harvests of eels, hunting of eggs and waterbirds, and collection of edible plant roots and tubers which grow along the fringes of the waters, they have more than enough food to sustain their population.  Indeed, the Junditmara have such a surplus of eels that they smoke eel meat for later use, or as a valued trade good to be sent along trade routes that stretch for hundreds of kilometres.

For in Junditmara country, Australia has its first people who build in stone.  Junditmara society is a complex of hierarchical chiefdoms, with chiefs controlling the lives of their peoples, assigning them to roles and arranging all their marriages.  The chiefdoms sit on a confluence of trade routes; the Junditmara export smoked eel meat and possum-skin coats, and import quartz, flints and some high-quality timber which cannot be found in their own country.  Collectively, the Junditmara chiefdoms oversee the lives of some ten thousand people [3].

Still, forget, for a moment, the people living alongside the waterways of south-western Victoria, and look further north, to the peoples who live along the Mighty Murray.  When last we saw them, the Aboriginal peoples along the Murray had been harvesting red yams from the wild and turning them into Australia’s first domesticated crop.  With the red yam, they have developed the idea of farming.  This is not enough to create an agricultural society, not by itself, but it is a beginning.

The gradual domestication of the red yam has turned these peoples from hunter-gatherers into hunter-gardeners.  They hunt and fish for food, they gather other wild plants, and they have established gardens of red yams which they plant and tend.  Red yams alone are not sufficient to let them establish permanent settlements.  Wild yam tubers can be stored for up to nine months, not enough to form a year-round store of food.  Instead, the peoples of the Murray establish early settlements where they reside for up to nine months out of each year, and which they leave for the remainder of the year to hunt and gather wild foods.

Of course, these societies are not static.  The population of the Murray peoples grows, and they start to develop new tools, new social structures, and new beliefs.  With their growing population comes more contact with their neighbours outside the Murray Valley.  Ancient trade routes connect the Murray Valley with regions both to the north and south.  In a land without beasts of burden or good roads, most trade goods are passed between many hands rather than having one person move along the length of a trade route, but where goods move, sometimes ideas do, too.

One of the major trade routes is to Junditmara country, far to the south.  This brings in eel meat and other goods, but it also means that ideas move, too.  With the increasing population of the Murray peoples, some of them visit their neighbours, and in time travellers bring back tales of the elaborate dams, weirs and channels of the Junditmara chiefdoms.  And with these tales comes inspiration.

For one of the Murray peoples call themselves the Gunnagal [4].  Their country is around where the River Loddon flows into the Murray, in a locality which in another time and place will see the founding of a town called Swan Hill.  The town would have been named for a lagoon at the joining of the two rivers, which teemed with so many waterfowl that the first European explorers who visited there could not sleep properly at night, even though they were camped half a mile away.

The Gunnagal know nothing of these explorers from a time-that-was-not, but they do know of the lagoon that is one of their rich sources of food.  Inspired by travellers’ tales, and with a population boosted by farming red yams, the Gunnagal begin constructing works of their own.  They do not have the same bountiful rain which feeds the waterways of the Junditmara, but they do have a river which floods prodigiously if irregularly.  With stone, wood and determination, they create their own systems of ponds and lagoons, connected with channels to the Murray and the Loddon.  In most times those channels are dry, but when the rivers rise they bring enough water to the new ponds and lagoons to sustain them as standing water.

With the new waterworks, the Gunnagal have a greatly expanded source of food.  In the lagoons they hunt for swans, ducks and other waterbirds.  In the waters, they lay traps to catch Murray cod, golden perch, Australian smelt, and a variety of other fish.  Around the watery fringes, they harvest plants with edible tubers and leaves.  On the nearby fields, they farm red yams, and in the more distant reaches, they hunt kangaroos and gather wild plants.

Like the Junditmara before them, the Gunnagal have established a lifestyle which allows them to establish permanent settlements.  Unlike the Junditmara, the Gunnagal live on a river system where these practices can spread over a wide distance.  For with the establishment of yams and fishing, of agriculture and aquaculture, the Gunnagal will develop the first permanent settlement large enough to be called a city.  As a people, they understand the rudiments of farming, and with their continued gathering of a wide range of wild plants, they can turn their attention to domesticating other Australian plants.

That is, if there are any other Australian plants which can be domesticated.

--

It has been claimed that the Australian continent lacks any domesticable plants apart from the macadamia nut [5,6].  This claim has the advantage of being simple, easy to repeat, and offers a plausible explanation for why Australia did not develop any full-scale indigenous agriculture.  This claim has only one major disadvantage: it is completely wrong.

For several Australian native plants have, in fact, been domesticated.  While the most widely-known native Australian domesticate is the macadamia, this was not the first Australian native plant to earn this status.  That distinction belongs to the plant which today is marketed in Australia as Warrigal greens (Tetragonia tetragonoides), and which has been variously called Botany Bay greens, Australian spinach, New Zealand spinach, and Cook’s cabbage.  This plant was brought from Australia and established in England in the later eighteenth century as a domesticated vegetable.  Its leaves are harvested as a vegetable which is used in a similar manner to spinach.

Another Australian plant was also taken to Britain and became domesticated.  The mountain pepperbush (Tasmannia lanceolata), a plant with peppery-flavoured leaves, was established in Cornwall, domesticated as the ‘Cornish pepperleaf,’ and became a flavoursome part of Cornish cuisine.  Recent selective breeding efforts have produced domesticated strains of several Australian fruits, such as quandong (Santalum acuminatum), muntries (Kunzea pomifera), and various native Australian Citrus species (relatives of oranges and limes).

More intriguingly, there are several domesticable plant species which are native both to Australia and nearby parts of Southeast Asia.  The water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) is an aquatic vegetable which is native to China, Southeast Asia and northern Australia, and which was domesticated in China.  Two species of yams (Dioscorea alata and D. bulbifera) were likewise native both to Southeast Asia and northern Australia, and were domesticated in the former, but not the latter.  Common purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is a succulent plant widespread in Australia and much of the Old World, was domesticated on multiple occasions in several parts of the world as a leaf vegetable, yet was not domesticated in Australia.  All of these plants are clearly domesticable, were known and used by Aboriginal peoples within Australia as wild-harvested sources of food, and yet were not domesticated on Australia’s shores [7].

Most intriguing of all, Australia possesses native plants which are easily cultivated into staple crops.  Trees of the genus Acacia are widespread throughout the tropics and subtropics of the globe, but they are most abundant in Australia.  The Australian acacias, usually called wattles, are well-adapted to the harsh conditions and are widespread throughout the continent.  They produce large quantities of edible seeds which are collected by Aboriginal peoples as a rich source of food.  Recently, several species of wattles were introduced into various parts of tropical Africa (Acacia colei, A. torulosa, A. tumida, A. elachantha and A. saligna).  The seeds from these wattles are being increasingly adopted as staple parts of the diet, and domesticated strains of wattles are being developed.

In short, Australia actually has a variety of domesticable plants, including some which have recently been domesticated or which were domesticated millennia ago elsewhere in the world.  Given this, the question which naturally arises is why these plants were not domesticated within Australia itself over the last few thousand years.

The answer lies in the fact that there is a distinction between domesticable plants and founder crops.  Domesticable plants are any plants which can be bred to human uses, but most of them first require a human population to be at least semi-sedentary and acquainted with the concept of farming.  Founder crops are much rarer plants, since they possess appropriate qualities (either alone, or in a package with other crops) to enable people to move from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a farming lifestyle.

Domesticable plants are relatively common throughout the world; founder crops are much rarer, and they need to become established first before many other plants can be domesticated.  The quintessential founder crops were found in the Middle East, which possessed eight Neolithic founder crops which allowed agriculture to be established there [8].  Founder crops were also found elsewhere in the world, although in most cases they needed longer to domesticate than in the Middle East [9].  Notably, however, the Middle East possessed several domesticable plants which were not domesticated until well after the Neolithic founder crops.  Plants such as olives and date palms were domesticable, but the process took several thousand years after agriculture had already started.

In Australia, historically, there were no founder crops.  Australia possessed several domesticable crops, including some yams which were domesticated elsewhere in the world once agriculture had started, but never in Australia.  Some yams are suitable as founder crops, such as the white and yellow yams of West Africa (Dioscorea rotunda and D. cayenensis, respectively), but others are not.

In allohistorical Australia, the red yam (Dioscorea chelidonius) is a suitable founder crop.  It is not enough to form a complete diet in itself, but it is enough to encourage a semi-sedentary lifestyle and an understanding of the basics of farming.  This leads to a stationary population who are still gathering wild plants as a significant component of their diet, which in turn means that more plants will be domesticated [10].  In time, this will lead to the development of a full Australian agricultural package of crops, and the farming cultures which go along with that.

--

[1] Also known, less charitably, as infodumps.

[2] While butterflies in this timeline have been confined to Australia until there is human contact with overseas peoples, it is inevitable that there will be changes within Australia itself.  Languages and peoples have changed slightly.  The people known as the Junditmara were historically called the Gunditjmara.

[3] This is one of those examples of things where I have to say “I am not making this up.”  This is exactly what the Gunditjmara did, historically.

[4] In keeping with the changed peoples within *Australia, the Gunnagal are not the same people who lived there historically.  The historical inhabitants of Swan Hill and the surrounding country were the Wemba-Wemba people.

[5] Yes, you all know of at least one author who made that claim, although he was not the only one.

[6] To be pedantic, macadamia nuts are actually derived from two closely-related species, Macadamia integrifolia and M. tetraphylla.

[7] There are several domesticable plant species which are common both to northern Australia and parts of Southeast Asia, and which were probably carried between the two regions by birds.  The plants listed above are those which are known to have been present in Australia before European contact and which were used by Aboriginal peoples.  There may well have been others (e.g. the domesticable herb and leaf vegetable common self-heal, Prunella vulgaris), but it’s not always clear whether these arrived before or after European contact.

[8] Even with potential founder crops, their domestication can sometimes be erratic.  There is some evidence that rye was domesticated in northern Syria before the eight main founder crops (emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley, lentils, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch and flax) were adopted.  If so, the domestication does not seem to have been continued; rye was largely abandoned as a crop for several millennia before eventually being domesticated again in Europe.  Likewise, early attempts to cultivate barley and oats in Jericho seem to have been unsuccessful.  It appears that founder crops will eventually be domesticated if people live in the area for long enough, but they may not be adopted quickly.

[9] Independent agriculture has arisen in a number of areas: definitely in Mesoamerica, China (at least once), New Guinea, the Andes, West Africa (at least once) and in eastern North America.  It is also quite likely to have arisen independently in Ethiopia, in two locations in China and West Africa, and possibly in India.  There have been a variety of founder crops in these areas; potatoes, squash, sunflowers, millets, sorghum and rice, among others.

[10] The domesticability of Australian native plants is reasonable (excellent, in fact, for Acacias), but the lack of suitable founder crops meant that Aboriginal peoples did not become sedentary and domesticate them.  Significant domestication efforts for Australian native plants had to wait until European arrival, since they had an established package of crops which allowed them to maintain a sedentary lifestyle.  This means that there has been only a couple of centuries to explore the potential of Australian native plants.  It also means that any Australian native plants need not only to be domesticable, but able to compete with long-established domesticated plants from elsewhere around the world.

This is often a difficult challenge.  The establishment of new fruit crops is hard, for instance, because wild fruits are usually small and have irregular yields.  Domesticated fruit plants have had thousands of years of selective breeding for larger size and improved flavour.  Establishing new cereal (or pseudocereal) crops is likewise challenging, since any new plants need to compete with long-established crops such as wheat, barley or maize which have thousands of years of cultivation for increased yields and ease of harvesting.  Moreover, in twentieth century terms, most new Australian crops need to compete with plants which are mechanically harvested.  The most promising Australian native staple crops, the Acacias, are quite difficult to harvest mechanically.  Notwithstanding these problems, some Australian plant species have been domesticated, and work is continuing in this area.  Naturally, an indigenous agricultural civilization would make more exploitation of Australian plant species since there would not be the same competition from overseas plants.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #3: Yams of Red, Trees of Gold

Picture a time four and a half thousand years ago in a history that never was, then picture a place along the banks of the river that will now never be called the Murray.  Along this river, in the region that will now never be called Swan Hill, live a people called the Gunnagal.  Like many of their neighbours along this river, the Gunnagal have domesticated a plant called the red yam.  An extremely valuable source of food, this crop has let the Gunnagal and other river peoples become hunter-gardeners.  They establish seasonal settlements along the river to live of their yam harvest for up to nine months, then disperse for the remaining months to live off what they can hunt, fish, and gather from the earth.

Beyond their lives as hunters and gardeners, the Gunnagal people have developed new methods.  Inspired by travellers’ stories of the distant Junditmara chiefdoms, the Gunnagal have turned their attention to expanding the natural lagoon into a system of wetlands from which they can harvest fish and water plants.  So successful are the Gunnagal that they can live year-round in stone dwellings and enjoy an abundance of food.  With their harvests of yam and fish, they have no need to wander seasonally.

From their first settlements, the Gunnagal begin to expand along the river, bringing their methods of yam and fish with them.  They have food, they have numbers, they have prestige, and they displace and absorb many of their neighbouring river peoples.  Along a length of the river of some eight hundred kilometres, the Gunnagal language becomes a lingua franca, and their culture becomes predominant.  Not all of their neighbours have been expelled, but those who remain do so because they have taken up Gunnagal farming and fishing methods, and in time their speech and many of their beliefs.

Along the river, amidst the expanded country of the Gunnagal, people still gather wild plants to supplement their regular sources of food.  They have knowledge of farming, now, and a sedentary lifestyle which inclines them to replant their most favoured wild foods rather than keep moving in search of new food supplies.  Selective human gathering of favoured plants started even before the Gunnagal adopted a fully sedentary lifestyle, and in time this process leads to the domestication of other crops...

--

The early Australian agricultural package consists of several plants which are native to the Murray Valley, and which show good potential for domestication:

The red yam (Dioscorea chelidonius) is a vine with perennial rootstock and foliage which usually dies back over winter and regrows in spring, although the foliage sometimes remains year-round in warmer and wetter climates.  Red yams produce an edible (and very tasty) tuber as a food store.  The tubers are formed quite deep in the ground (up to a metre down), and so take a reasonable amount of digging to extract, but the tubers are large enough to justify the effort.  In the wild state red yam tubers can grow up to 1 kg in weight (more in wet years); domesticated red yam tubers are often much larger.  Domesticated red yams have been artificially selected both for larger tubers and for a sweeter taste [1].

Like many (but not all) Australian wild yam species, red yams can be eaten raw but are usually roasted or cooked in other ways.  In culinary terms, the red yam can be cooked in a variety of ways similar to the potato or sweet potato.  It is a staple crop which for most people forms over half of their daily calorie intake.  Red yams are native to the central Murray Valley, but domesticated forms can be grown without too much difficulty in regions of adequate rainfall between latitudes of about 25 to 45 degrees.  Cultivation of red yams at more tropical latitudes will need to await the development of cultivars more heat-tolerant and better adapted to tropical growing seasons, which will not be quick [2].

Wattles (Australian species of the genus Acacia) are a diverse group of shrubs and trees with nearly a thousand species across the continent.  Wattles are fast-growing, can tolerate extended periods of drought, and grow even on poor soils.  Indeed, they are legumes whose roots provide nitrates to revitalise the soil.  They produce large numbers of protein- and vitamin-rich seeds which are a valuable source of food.  Wattle seeds are pseudocereals; while not true cereals, their seeds can be used in a similar manner.  Wattle seeds also remain viable for many years; over twenty years for some species.

The early Gunnagal peoples domesticate three main species of wattle, the mystery wattle (Acacia difformis), the bramble wattle (A. victoriae) and the golden wattle (A. pycnantha).  Domesticated wattles are distinguished from wild varieties by having larger seeds, more regular yields from year to year, and also for flowering reliably at around the same time each year.  While each individual wattle species has its own qualities [3], their main uses are similar.  Wattle seeds are used similarly to cereal grains such as wheat or barley; the seeds are ground into flour for baking into flatbreads, cakes and similar products.  They have a much higher protein content than cereal grains, which is particularly valuable in a society which does not have many domesticated animals.  They are extremely important as a food reserve; the long life of wattle seeds means that they are ideal for storage until drought years.

Apart from their seeds, domesticated wattles have many other uses.  They grow very quickly and can be used as a valuable source of timber.  Wattle bark produces fibre which can be used for rope and clothing, and also contains tannins which can be used to tan animal leather.  Their roots replenish the nitrate content of the soil, which means that they can be used in a system of crop rotation or companion planting alongside red yams and other crops.  The empty seed pods and dead leaves of wattles can be used similarly as compost or mulch to maintain soil fertility; they are often mixed back in with the replaced soil after yam tubers have been dug out.  Wattles produce a very useful gum, which is sweet and edible either immediately or dried as stored food, added to water to make a sweet drink, sometimes used as a kind of candy, but which also has many other uses, such as an adhesive or binding agent in paints [4].  Even the pests of wattles have their uses; the galls formed by wattle pests are edible, as are the witchetty grubs which burrow into wattle trunks and roots.  In time, domesticated wattles become as important to the Murray civilization as the olive tree is for Mediterranean peoples, or the date palm is in Mesopotamia; the Gunnagal word for wattles, butitju, will also become the root of their words for “wealth” and “prosperity.”

Murnong or yam daisy (Microseris lanceolata) is a perennial flowering plant which produces an edible radish-shaped tuber.  Like the red yam, murnongs have perennial rootstock but their above-ground foliage usually dies back every winter.  Murnong tubers are much smaller than those of red yams, but murnongs can be grown much closer together, and their tubers are nearer to the surface and thus require less digging.  For culinary purposes, murnong tubers are treated similarly to the red yam or more familiar crops such as potatoes.  In most areas, domesticated murnongs are a secondary crop when compared to red yams; they do not produce as high a food yield per hectare, but they add different flavours to the diet, and it is customary to have some land under murnong cultivation in case disease or pests affect the main yam harvest.  In the highland areas of south-eastern Australia, murnongs will become a more important crop since hybrids with the related alpine murnong (M. scapigera) are better suited to upland growing conditions than most red yam cultivars.

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is a succulent annual flowering plant which tolerates a wide variety of soil conditions, and is resistant to drought.  The leaves, seeds, stems and flowers are all edible.  Purslane is abundant throughout mainland Australia and much of the Old World.  It has been independently domesticated on multiple occasions throughout the world.  Amongst the Gunnagal, it is normally grown as a leaf vegetable; the leaves can be harvested all year round and are a useful source of some vitamins and essential dietary minerals.  The seeds are also sometimes collected to be ground into flour and added to wattleseed flour.

Spiny-headed mat-rush (Lomandra longifolia) is a perennial sedge-like plant, with many stiff leaves that grow close together and are suitable for weaving.  Mat-rush is a hardy plant which can tolerate a wide variety of soils and weather conditions.  Domesticated mat-rush is grown primarily as a vegetable fibre to make baskets, nets and the like.  Mat-rush is occasionally used as a source of food during lean times; its seeds and the base of its leaves are edible, and its flowers are a source of nectar, but its primary role is as a non-food fibre crop.

Scrub nettle (Urtica incisa) is a relative of the stinging nettle (U. dioica) of North America and Europe.  It is a perennial plant which dies back to the ground every winter.  As with its northern hemisphere relative, the leaves and flowers of scrub nettle are covered with hollow hairs loaded with formic acid, which produces a nasty stinging reaction if it comes into contact with the skin.  The main use of domesticated scrub nettle is harvesting high-quality fibre from its stems, which is mostly used to make textiles, and ropes and other cordage.  Scrub nettle is occasionally used as a vegetable, too; its leaves are tasty and quite nutritious, provided that they are cooked first to neutralise the formic acid.

Native flax (Linum marginale) is a close relative of common flax (L. usitatissimum).   Native flax is a perennial plant which, like many Australian plants, often dies back during winter.  The wild version has long been used by Aboriginal peoples as a source of fibre and for its edible seeds.  Domesticated native flax, like common flax, is used as a source of fibre for textiles; the Gunnagal will rely on linen for most of their clothing and other weaving.  The seeds are edible on their own or sometimes added to wattleseed flour; they can also be used to make linseed oil, but this is rare because of its short shelf life under Australian conditions.

--

The Australian agricultural package has quite a different range of characteristics from most other agricultural packages which have arisen from other independent origins of agriculture [5].  Perhaps the most noteworthy of those is that all of the staple crops, apart from the relatively minor purslane, are perennial plants, i.e. they are planted once and then produce a harvest each year for a number of years.  This is in contrast to most of the staple crops grown around the globe today and historically, which are annual plants i.e. plant once and then harvest.

Annual plants are the basis of most modern agriculture.  Staple crops such as wheat, barley, maize, rice, potatoes [6] are all harvested as annual plants.  Annual plants have a variety of advantages which have made them easy to domesticate and then use.  As annual plants, they have a fast generation time which enables selective breading to happen more rapidly.  There are a wide variety of annual plants which are domesticable and offer good food yields.  In particular, there are many annual cereal crops which produce grains which can be stored for several periods, which is vital for preventing famine during drought.  Moreover, with an annual plant, if the harvest is lost due to disease, drought, flood, fire or warfare, then only a single year’s production has been lost, and it can be replanted next year.

However, annual plants also have a number of disadvantages.  They have quite high labour requirements, since the soil needs to be plowed and plants resown every year.  The type of soil cover used with annual plants – light roots, soil often exposed to the weather during planting – means that topsoil erosion and other environmental damage is quite likely.  The soil loss is often severe enough that annual crops can no longer be reliably grown.  For example, the Greek highlands were originally deforested to plant wheat and barley; it was only after the topsoil was mostly washed away that farmers switched to perennials such as grapes and olives.  Similar processes caused desertification in much of what used to be the Fertile Crescent.  Apart from these problems, many annual crops also have to retain a considerable part of each harvest as seed for next year; in classical harvests of barley, wheat and other small grains, up to half the harvest had to be kept as seed grain.

While annual plants have been the foundation of most agriculture, there is a potential alternative.  Some perennial plants also offer rich sources of food.  As crops, they have several advantages over annual plants.  The labour requirements for collecting food are much lower, since there is no need to plow and replant each year.  Perennial plants also have established root structures which allow them to take advantage of out-of-season rains or the standing water table, which is very useful in drought-prone areas such as Australia.  The same established root structures, combined with much more limited plowing, and more frequent (often permanent) plant cover means that the soil takes much less damage.  Since perennials do not need yearly planting, it also means that there is no need to retain large amounts of each year’s harvest for seed crops.

Nonetheless, perennial plants also have some significant disadvantages.  There are not as many easily domesticable perennial crops; a problem which is compounded by the fact that the longer generation time of perennial plants means that it takes longer to selectively breed new strains.  Many perennial crops produce food which is difficult to store long enough for the next harvest; fruits are tasty but hard to preserve, as are many root crops.  Probably the biggest disadvantage is the longer growing time for most perennial plants.  If an annual crop is lost, more can be replanted for next year’s harvest, and a society has lost only one year’s worth of food.  If a perennial crop is lost through warfare, raids, or fires, it may take fifteen or twenty years for the trees to regrow.  This may make it difficult for a perennial agricultural society to feed itself in the interim.

For these reasons, it seems that perennials are rarely used as staple crops, despite the considerable labour savings.  There are a few perennial crops which have been used as staple crops, such as plantains and breadfruit, but these have usually had a limited distribution.  Most agricultural societies have used annuals as their main staples, with perennial crops such as fruit trees taking on a supplementary role rather than providing the bulk of people’s daily calorie intake.  There have been occasional societies which have used perennials as their main source of food, such as parts of Sardinia which used chestnuts, and lowland New Guinea and the Moluccas which used sago palms.

The perennials which are grown in Aboriginal agriculture have some traits which minimise many of the disadvantages of perennial crops elsewhere.  These plants are relatively quick-growing.  Red yams and murnongs can both be planted in one year to be harvested in the same year, then keep on producing a fresh tuber every year [7].  Wattles grow quickly enough that they start to yield useful harvests of seeds within two to four years.  Wattle seeds are also excellent as a food reserve for long-term storage.

Australian perennials are also well-adapted for recovering from damage, thanks to evolving on a landscape regularly visited by flood and fire.  Yams already die back during winter and regrow in spring, and they can recover from fire in the same way.  Wattles have the ability to regrow from their roots after fire or other damage, which will mean that domesticated wattles can regrow if raids by neighbours means that the trees are burnt or cut down.

The nature of Australian perennials also means that their farming methods are quite different from early farming methods elsewhere around the globe.  The overall labour requirements for Aboriginal farming are lower than for most agricultural systems with annual crops.  As perennials, there is minimal need for plowing.  Wattles and yams are harvested at different times of the year [8], which means that farmers can rotate their work between crops without too much difficulty, and there is not the same intensity required to have all available workers available to help during the harvest.  Outside of harvest time, Australian crops still need some ongoing tending – pruning of trees, tapping of gum, replacing individual plants when they die, and the like – but this can be spaced out over most of the year.

Overall, the perennial nature of Aboriginal agriculture means that they have a much higher food yield per worker than with most annual crops.  Living in a dry and uncertain climate as they do, they do not have a particularly high yield per hectare, but individual farmers are quite productive.  This makes it easier for them to accumulate food surpluses for storage.  In turn, this allows Aboriginal farming societies to sustain a much larger percentage of their population as urban dwellers than in most early agricultural societies.  Most early agriculture needed ten or more rural farmers to support one non-farmer, be it a smith or a priest.  Australian perennial agriculture means that only four or five farmers are needed to support non-farmers.  This means that they can support more specialists, more division of labour, and, in time, much more besides...

--

[1] Selection for relatively sweeter varieties is common to a lot of domesticated varieties of plants.  This has an additional benefit of providing a higher nutritional yield for the domesticated yams, since more of the tuber is formed from digestible starch rather than water or indigestible fibre.  Domesticated varieties of red yams have a lower water content (which means that they store longer) and it also means that they provide a higher calorie intake per unit of weight.

[2] The red yam has evolved into a form which is well-suited to the periodic droughts and semi-arid conditions along the Middle Murray.  The most important of these is that red yams have evolved a process called crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), which allows plants to store atmospheric carbon dioxide in their leaves at night, and then photosynthesise during the day.  This means that CAM plants keep the stomata in their leaves closed during the heat of the day, and lose much less water than non-CAM plants.  This makes red yams well-suited for semi-arid conditions, and combined with their deep roots, makes them resistant even to long and persistent droughts.  CAM photosynthesis comes at a price, however; CAM plants are less efficient at absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide.  This means that in areas which do have higher rainfall, the red yam is likely to be out-competed by non-CAM plants.  Thus, the red yam does not grow naturally in the wetter areas of Australia’s eastern coast, although domesticated red yams can grow there provided that the soil is well-drained.  (Red yams, like other yam species, do not tolerate waterlogged soils very well.)

[3] The first domesticated wattle, the mystery wattle (Acacia difformis), grows in the old Gunnagal homelands around Swan Hill.  As the Gunnagal expand west along the Murray, they domesticate the tree variously known as bramble wattle, gundabluey or elegant wattle (A. victoriae).  As they move east along the Murray, they domesticate the golden wattle (A. pycnantha).  These three wattles form the early domesticated wattle species, although other wattles will be domesticated elsewhere in Australian when agriculture spreads.

Of the early domesticated species, bramble wattle is tolerant of a very wide range of soil and weather conditions, grows very quickly, and usually produces the overall largest yield of seeds even in drought years.  Mystery wattle produces a sizable seed yield, with very large individual seeds which are easy to harvest from their pods, tolerates a range of harsh conditions, and produces large quantities of edible gum.  Golden wattle produces a tolerable crop of seeds, but it is slower-growing, and when grown in close cultivation, is more vulnerable to pests, disease and death.  Domesticated golden wattles are usually planted alongside the edges of yam fields rather across whole fields.  Golden wattles are on the whole less reliable as a source of food, but they have the advantage of growing much taller than other domesticates wattles, which makes them a source of longer timber.  The bark of golden wattles is also an extremely rich source of tannins for animal leather, and its bark is useful for fibre.

[4] Wattle gum is similar to gum arabic, although true gum arabic comes from related African Acacia species (A. senegal and A. seyal).

[5] Collectively, the Australian agricultural package is most-suited to latitudes between 25 to 45 degrees at low elevations, with long-term rainfall between 300 to 500 millimetres.  Their nature as perennials means that rain does not need to fall in a particular season; the plants can cope with irregular rainfall.  Established plants can tolerate drought reasonably well, although a prolonged drought is likely to mean that new plantings do not grow.  Growing the full package of crops with long-term rainfall below 300 millimetres is marginal; the main crops will tolerate areas where the long-term rainfall is anything above about 250 millimetres, although the yields will be lower.  Rainfall above 500 millimetres can be tolerated, and to a degree this will increase the yield, but soils need to be well-drained; waterlogged soils will cause problems for yams, in particular.  The plants grow best at low altitudes, although they can be grown at higher elevations, particularly at latitudes between 25 and 30 degrees.  Some of the domesticated plants can grow at lower latitudes, particularly the bramble wattle, but the early agricultural package as a whole does not grow well in tropical latitudes.

[6] Potatoes are actually perennial, but are usually grown as annuals.

[7] Red yams can in theory be planted fresh each year from cuttings or tubers, and then harvested the same year, turning them in effect into annual plants.  Such agricultural practices could be expected to give higher yields in good years, since most yam species grow more quickly with such practices than if they are left to regrow from roots with most of their food storage (i.e. a tuber) harvested.  This is how yams are used in much of the world today, although not everywhere.  The erratic nature of Australian rainfall, however, means that newly-planted yams would have trouble growing during drought years, since they lack the established root structures needed to draw on the water table or out of season rains.  For this reason, and in line with Aboriginal gathering practices before crops, I expect that red yams will be turned into a perennial crop where they are harvested each year but where the uppermost part of the tuber and their root system is left as undisturbed as possible so that it can regrow each year.

[8] Australian wattles as a group flower year-round; there is almost no time when there is not a wattle blooming somewhere on the continent.  However, the domesticated wattles fall into two main divisions.  Early-flowering wattles (such as mystery wattle) flower around August-September, and their seeds are harvested around October-November.  Late-flowering wattles (such as bramble wattle) flower around November-December, and their seeds are harvested around January-February.  Red yams and murnongs are harvested in late autumn, around April-May.

--

Thoughts?

P.S. As mentioned in the post above, all of these plants (apart from red yams) exist.  For those who are curious, below are some links to more information about some of them.  For those who aren’t curious, Lands of Red and Gold is now moving past the “necessary background information stage” and into the actual depiction of early Australian agricultural societies, which the next few posts will be showing.

Bramble wattle/elegant wattle:
http://www.flindersranges.com.au/2008/08/27/the-wonder-wattle/
http://www.aridzonetrees.com/AZT%20Interactive%20Buttons/Tree%20Index/Cut%20sheets/Acacia/Acacia%20victoriae.htm

Golden wattle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_pycnantha
http://asgap.org.au/a-pyc.html

Some information on how wattles are being used as crops today (no thanks to Messr. Diamond and “no domesticable crops in Australia”):
http://www.worldwidewattle.com/infogallery/utilisation/sehel.php

Murnong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microseris_lanceolata
http://www.australianplantssa.asn.au/photo/gallery/m-lanc-gall.html

Purslane:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea
http://asgap.org.au/p-ole.html

Spiny-headed mat-rush:
http://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/interns-2007/lomandra-longifolia.html
http://www.wildseedtasmania.com.au/webgallery/pages/Lomandra%20longifolia.htm

Scrub nettle:
http://morwellnp.pangaean.net/cgi-bin/show_species.cgi?find_this=Urtica%20incisa
http://www.utas.edu.au/docs/plant_science/field_botany/species/dicots/urticsp/urtiinci.html

Native flax:
http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/science/hot_science_topics/Ecology_of_Cumberland_Plain_Woodland/woodland_plants/linum_marginale
http://www.anbg.gov.au/apu/plants/linumarg.html

--

Lands of Red and Gold #4: What Lies Beneath The Earth

Archaeology, it has been said is the Peeping Tom of the sciences.  It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been [1].

When the time comes for future archaeologists to fossick through the buried remnants of Gunnagal culture – the Murray Valley civilization – they will discover a great many things.  They will find a series of settlements, some large, some small, some ephemeral, some built to endure.  They will argue over the details, placing too much emphasis on some, and disregarding others.  They will understand some things correctly, and others they will misinterpret.  But in time, a picture of sorts will emerge, a story complete with stratigraphy, estimated and often disputed dates, some accurate observations and some misconceptions.

The first phase of the Murray Valley civilization is what future archaeologists will call the Archaic Era.  The dates are often contested, but most scholars date the Archaic Era from 5000 to 2500 BC.  This period is a time of the first glimmerings of agriculture, of the increasing cultivation of yams as a staple part of the diet, and the first indications of semi-permanent settlements throughout the Middle Murray; some of these are large enough to contain a dozen or more families.  Construction of dwellings in those settlements becomes more advanced as the Archaic Era elapses; in the early phases the dwellings were usually pit-houses dug out of the earth, by the Late Archaic timber houses were built above ground.

The Archaic Era is the time of the development of the first arts of civilization, as those future archaeologists define it.  This is the time when the cultivation of red yams spreads along the river.  This is the time when the Gunnagal first discover the use of ceramics, with pottery, bowls, and other cooking and storage vessels emerging in the archaeological record.  Late in the Archaic Era, archaeologists report the first evidence of loom weaving, with textiles such as blankets and clothes woven from nettle and flax fibres.

The next phase of the Murray Valley civilization will be called the Formative Era by most later archaeologists, and the Preclassical Era by a few holdouts.  The Formative Era is the first flowering of the Murray Valley civilization, the time when the first full agriculture is developed, closely followed by the rise of the first towns and cities, and the emergence of complex hierarchical societies.  This phase of the Murray Valley civilization is comparable to what later archaeologists were familiar with in the development of other ancient river valley civilizations such as the Sumerians along the Tigris and Euphrates, Predynastic Egypt along the Nile, the Harappans along the Indus, and the early Chinese along the Yellow River.  While the Murray Valley civilization started later than most of those civilizations, the archaeologists will note that the emergence of large towns and cities followed much more quickly after the development of agriculture than it did in the other early river valley civilizations [2].

The start of the Early Formative (or Early Preclassical) period is dated to 2500 BC, with the emergence of Swan Hill, the first permanent agricultural settlement to be found in the Australian archaeological record.  As with most prehistoric sites around the world, the Swan Hill culture is recognised principally by the development of a new pottery style.  The older Archaic pottery was usually decorated with simple patterns of lines and crosses.  The pottery at Swan Hill is decorated with pointillist images, usually of animals such as kangaroos and possums, and sometimes fish.  Archaeologists will argue at length about the purpose of these representations.  They are not something used to depict what was stored or cooked in many of those bowls and pots, since the decorations show only animals, not the plants such as yams and wild-gathered wattle seeds and murnong which formed much of the diet, and traces of which could be found amongst the pottery.  Perhaps they had some ritual significance, some archaeologists argue, while others see these pottery decorations merely the surviving example of what was presumably a flourishing artistic tradition.  As it happens, the latter archaeologists are correct; the early Gunnagal decorate almost everything that they use indoors.  Their house walls are painted too, and most of the early Gunnagal paint their skins in ochre too, but these other artworks are not usually represented in the archaeological record.

In Swan Hill, future archaeologists will have trouble excavating the heartland of the earliest buildings, since so much of what was built there is overlaid with the buildings of later towns.  But they are able to discover that a sizable town emerged in the region by about 2400 BC, with at least five hundred people living in or near its walls.  They built in wood and mud-brick, not in stone.  Evidence excavated from cooking sites indicates that these early Gunnagal were not just yam farmers; they had abundant meals of fish, duck, kangaroo and emu, among other meats.  They also find enough evidence to indicate that the Gunnagal had started to build channels, weirs, and other works to create the first improved wetlands.  One detail which the archaeologists will get wrong is that they think that the development of a full agricultural package – yams, murnong, purslane, and wattles – is what leads to permanent settlement and the development of these wetlands.  In fact, the development happened the other way around; the Gunnagal learned the practice of improved wetlands from the Junditmara far to the south, settled into a fully sedentary lifestyle, and only then started to cultivate a greater variety of plants and eventually domesticated them.

While the archaeologists will get this detail wrong, and a few others, they will be correct in the broad picture they draw.  Swan Hill is the first permanent settlement, established around 2500 BC, but it will be followed by several others.  The distinctive Gunnagal style of pottery spreads along much of the Murray over the next few centuries, associated with the development of several other towns and cities.  Some of the pottery itself spreads much further into Victoria and New South Wales, evidence of considerable trade routes with other peoples who are still living as hunter-gatherers, but there is no doubt that the peoples along the Murray itself are farmers.  This is still a time before the development of metallurgy; apart from a few knives and axe-heads of hammered meteoric iron, the Early Formative urban centres use only stone tools.

The end of the Early Formative period will be conventionally dated at 2000 BC.  By this time, Swan Hill has turned into a burgeoning town of some five thousand people.  There are four other major urban centres along the Murray during this period, and several smaller towns.  They produced a variety of artworks with what will be described as “ritual significance.”  The most common of these artworks are clay figurines, cast into human form but always with some aspect of their anatomy exaggerated; long legs or arms or heads.  Archaeologists note that these early cities clearly had some kind of elite class; a few houses in each city are much larger than others, and some of the surviving burials show men and women interred with considerable adornment.  Since there was no writing during this period, they cannot be certain, but it does not look like these early cities had a single ruler; rather, they had some kind of council or other oligarchy.  As it happens, they are right in this conjecture.

Following the Early Formative period comes an era which most archaeologists will call the Middle Formative, but a persistent minority will call the Middle Preclassical.  As with most prehistoric sites, this period is recognised in the archaeological record by gradually evolving pottery styles, but it has two particularly distinguishing features: building with rammed earth, and the emergence of metallurgy with the first smelted copper tools.

Construction in rammed earth is the most distinctive aspect of Middle and Late Formative cities.  In the Early Formative, buildings were usually constructed from mud-brick prepared and dried in the sun.  Mud-bricks were easy to make, but lasted only three or four decades before they crumbled.  Rammed earth is a more laborious construction method, but the results are worth the effort.  Gunnagal labourers gather soil which has an appropriate composition of clay, gravel and sand, moisten it, add a stabilising blend of lime and wattle-gum, then pour the mixture into a wooden frame and compress it.  When the rammed earth dries, the wooden frames are removed and then left to cure for up to two years.  The resulting walls are almost as strong as stone [3].  Rammed earth construction will be used in most major buildings throughout the Middle and Late Formative periods, although some smaller dwellings are still built out of timber or mud-brick.

The Middle Formative is also the time when archaeologists will first recognise the use of copper metallurgy in the Murray Valley civilization.  The first copper-working emerges not in Swan Hill, but much further to the west.  Gunnagal peoples slowly moved along the length of the Murray during the Early Formative, and by 2000 BC they had established a small settlement in the region of Murray Bridge, in the lower reaches of the Murray.  This is a region of moderate rainfall, barely suitable for yam farming, and less useful for wetlands, but with enough potential to allow settlement.  The region of Murray Bridge includes some of the richest copper ores in Australia, including some easily accessible surface deposits, and the people of Murray Bridge are quick to discover and exploit them.

Knowledge of copper-working spreads quickly throughout the Murray Valley during the Middle Formative, and copper tools will take their place alongside stone tools.  Copper as a metal is not strong enough to replace all the uses of stone, but copper battle-axes and knives become common finds in the archaeological record from this period.  Copper also becomes a valuable decorative metal; bangles, beads, pendants, earrings and other jewellery are well-represented in the archaeological record.  The most abundant discovery of all is copper-tips shaped for digging, which were once attached to wooden digging sticks, but where the wood is almost always rotted away.  Copper-tipped digging sticks will gradually be developed into spades during the Middle and Late Formative as copper becomes more abundant.  This will greatly enhance the productivity of yam farmers, and allow a substantial growth in population during these periods.

The Middle Formative will be conventionally dated to end in 1400 BC, although the date is largely arbitrary.  The archaeological record of the Middle and Late Formative periods blends into each other in a series of smooth transitions; there are no dramatic changes in the culture.  The trend throughout both periods is the same; increasing urban and rural populations, the development of commerce and more complex social organisation, increasingly impressive public architecture which would have required the mobilisation of a considerable labour force.  The first evidence of proto-writing emerges during the later stages of the Middle Formative, with simple marks on large ceramic containers which are thought to depict either ownership of those containers, or their contents.  These written marks develop into more complex patterns during the Late Formative, and sometimes appear on other surviving goods such as jewellery and weapons, although they remain indecipherable.

The Late Formative period is a time of increasingly sophisticated metallurgy.  Many copper ores contain arsenic as a natural impurity, including those around the Lower Murray.  Smiths in Murray Bridge discover how to melt and reforge increasing concentrations of arsenic from copper ores, and produce the first arsenical bronzes.  From a metallurgical perspective, arsenical bronzes are perfectly functional, and about as useful as bronzes made from the more familiar alloy of tin and copper.  The toxic fumes from molten arsenic mean that many Gunnagal smiths go lame, crippled, or into early graves, but such is the price of progress.  The development of arsenic bronze tools is credited with increasing stonework in the Late Formative.  While rammed earth remains the main building material, statues and other decorative stone facings are added to many buildings.

The Gunnagal also learn to work with other metals during this period.  Travellers moving along the spreading trade routes reach Glen Osmond in what would have become one of the suburbs of Adelaide, where in time they discover a rich source of lead and silver ore.  In keeping with their earlier traditions, the main early use which Gunnagal smiths find for these new metals is for decorative purposes; lead beads become valued adornments, and the first silversmiths discover how to fashion a variety of jewellery.

The Late Formative also marks the time when domesticated animals become a major component of the Gunnagal diet.  Domesticated dingos have long been used by the Gunnagal as hunting dogs and fireside companions of the elite, but during the Late Formative, excavation of middens reveals the first evidence of dingos consumed as meat.  Artistic evidence from surviving murals, along with the same excavation of middens, reveals that domesticated ducks were also important as a source of meat, eggs and feathers [4].  Archaeologists interpret the domestication of these animals as a sign of growing sophistication amongst Gunnagal farmers.  This is true to a point, but what is less easily realised from the archaeological record is that the switch to domesticated sources of meat was adopted because of growing population straining natural resources.  Gunnagal peoples during earlier periods were able to support their dietary needs for meat through fishing and hunting waterfowl in their artificial wetlands, supplemented by hunting kangaroos in fire-managed rangelands further from the river.  During the Late Formative, the Gunnagal have reached the limits of how many wetlands they can construct given their existing technology and scarce supply of bronze tools, and over-hunting has decimated kangaroo numbers within the rangelands.

In the matter of Gunnagal animal domestication, as in so much else, the future archaeologists can make only limited inferences about the nature of Gunnagal society and technology.  They can recognise the main urban centres, they can salvage some tools and remains of crops, they can recognise the pottery carried by trade far beyond the Murray, but so much more will be lost to the ravages of time.  For instance, archaeologists will assume correctly that the Gunnagal used many more tools of wood than they did of stone or copper, but most of those wooden tools have decayed into oblivion.

Excavators of the early Murray Valley cities cannot find the written records they would need to tell them what language these people spoke, or what they believed.  Based on the languages spoken by their descendants in the Murray Valley and elsewhere, future archaeologists make the inference, correctly as it happens, that those people spoke a language which they call Proto-Gunnagal.  But there is so much more which they can only guess at, such as the nature of Gunnagal religion.  Archaeologists find small shrines in most well-to-do homes, but not the same large temples which were common in the comparable stages of many other early civilizations.  Another question which puzzles researchers is why knowledge of domesticated crops took so long to spread beyond the Gunnagal heartlands in the Murray Valley; the Gunnagal had developed a useful agricultural package by 2000 BC, but even a thousand years later, traces of farming had scarcely spread beyond the Murray.

Still, there is one conclusions future archaeologists will draw which is entirely correct.  The Gunnagal are the first Australian civilization.  In their language, their beliefs, their learning, and their social organisation, they will influence all who come after them...

--

[1] Originally said by Jim Bishop.

[2] This is because the nature of Aboriginal permaculture (perennial agriculture) allows the accumulation of much larger food surpluses per worker than most annual forms of agriculture.

[3] Rammed earth (or pisé de terre) is a method of construction which has been independently invented in several parts of the world, such as Mesopotamia and China.  It is quite labour-intensive, but in reasonably dry climates, allows for quite long-lasting buildings.  In a civilization which lacks domesticated animals or hard metal tools, it is also easier to develop strong building walls with rammed earth than it is to quarry and transport stone.  (Copper is too soft to be of much use quarrying hard building stones.)

[4] The Gunnagal have domesticated the Australian wood duck (Chenonetta jubata).  This duck is an excellent candidate for domestication, since it is easily kept and bred in captivity; indeed, captive birds can raise up to three broods in a year.  Wood ducks need minimal contact with the water; they spend most of their time foraging for grass, clover and other plants on land.  Domesticated wood ducks are easily fed by grazing with occasional supplements of wattleseeds, and can even be used to pick out insects and other pests from crops.  Domesticated wood ducks would be a valuable source of meat, eggs and feathers in a culture which otherwise lacks many domesticated animals.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #5: Life As It Once Was

Future archaeologists excavated much of what was left of what they called the Murray Valley civilization, but even the most detailed excavations can only reveal a small fraction of the lives of vanished times.  To find out what life was like for the Gunnagal in what will be called the Late Formative period, archaeology alone will not suffice.  Another way is needed to look back in time, to imagine what happened in this world that never was.  If the pages of history can be turned back for a time, then you might picture the Murray Valley as it existed one thousand years before the birth of the man whom some would call the Christ.

In that time, if you looked from above the Murray, you would see a thin ribbon of blue winding its way from east to west across an otherwise dry landscape.  Near the river, fields of yams spread their spread their foliage across the landscape, dark green leaves and stems winding up the forked branches planted for them, or spreading across the soil.  If watched over time, the yams die back to the ground in late autumn, regrow in late winter and early spring, display small purple flowers in late spring, then grow vigorously for most of the summer, before the tubers are harvested in late autumn, and the cycle begins again.  Wattles grow along the edges of the yam-fields, or are planted in rows on sloping or hilly ground.  The trees grow quickly when they are planted, regrow vigorously if damaged by fire, and in season are covered in sweet-smelling golden flowers, which are then replaced by abundant seed pods which start green but ripen to brown before they are harvested.

In between the yam fields, or closer to the river, lie the marks of the other main achievement of the Gunnagal civilization.  They have shaped the land to be a home for water, with channels running amongst yam fields to connect to ponds, small lakes, swamps and other wetlands.  Maintained by a system of weirs, dams and other stonework, the wetlands usually thrive even through the irregular droughts which can last for several years.  Rushes, reeds and other water plants grow vigorously throughout these wetlands, and the Gunnagal sometimes harvest them for food.  Mostly, though, here is where traps are laid to catch Murray cod, golden perch and many other fish, and sometimes to catch the swans, ducks, and other water birds which visit.

From the fields and the rivers, the Gunnagal draw almost their complete diet.  The core of the Gunnagal diet is yams, murnong, and wattleseeds; everyday labourers often eat little else.  Yams are usually peeled and then roasted alone or with murnong.  Sometimes yams and murnong are boiled in water and then pounded into a paste-like porridge called benong which can be eaten alone or with soup [1].  Wattleseeds are ground into flour, which can be baked into flatbreads and served alone or alongside roasted yams.  Ground wattleseed can also be used to flavour benong, along with some other seed crops such as purslane and flax seeds.  Leaf vegetables such as purslane and nettle leaves are baked and served as part of the same meal.  This is what the Gunnagal call the ‘farmer’s diet’; adequate from a nutritional point of view, sufficient to avoid starvation, but low-status food which the upper classes will try to avoid.

Meat is the preferred delicacy amongst the Gunnagal, eaten by elders and other high-status people whenever they can, and usually available to common citizens only on feast-days and other festivals.  Fish is their most common meat, harvested in traps from their wetlands.  The traps are only permitted to be large enough to catch fish of specified size, and even then the harvests are controlled by order of the Council of each city.  Ducks and dingos are also farmed for their meat, although less common than fish.  Wild-harvested meat from waterbirds in the wetlands is an occasional delicacy, also subject to control from the Councils.  The rarest meats are wild-hunted animals such as kangaroo and emu, which can be gathered from the rangelands designated by city Councils.  The rangelands are in theory subject to Council hunting controls, but in practice kangaroos and emus are being increasingly harvested ‘against law and custom.’  The Councils appoint rangers to police the rangelands, but the expanses of the rangelands make effective control difficult, and in many cases the rangers themselves are the illegal harvesters.  All of this makes kangaroo and emu meat increasingly rare and expensive.  Amongst city-dwellers, usually only elders can afford it.

While meat is the most common Gunnagal delicacy, they also have other valued high-status foods.  For those who cannot afford meat, the most common substitute is ‘beefsteak fungus,’ an edible fungus which in appearance is remarkably like a piece of raw meat.  In the wild it grows on living or dead wood, and with their abundant sources of timber from wattles, the Gunnagal grow this fungus as a delicacy [2].  A variety of wild-gathered plants are available from the wetlands and cherished for their exotic flavours; the most common of these are cumbungi and water-lily roots.  Duck eggs are much enjoyed but rarely eaten, at least in the cities; one of the ironies is that city-dwellers view eggs as a luxury food which is above a ‘farmer’s diet,’ but actual Gunnagal farmers eat eggs regularly.  The Gunnagal have also domesticated a few native fruit species, such as native raspberries, which are treasured seasonal delicacies, and sometimes dried for later use.  The Gunnagal also cultivate a variety of plants which are used as flavourings or spices, such as river mint, mountain peppers, and sea celery [3].  Consumption of spicy food is another mark of the elite; duck in river mint sauce is particularly popular, as is pepper kangaroo steak, for those who can afford both the kangaroo and the pepper leaves.  For those who lack the wherewithal to procure spices, wattle gum is a common sweetener for both food and drink.

Of all the delicacies treasured amongst the peoples who live along the Mighty Murray, the rarest and most expensive is wattleseed oil.  Wattleseeds themselves are abundant and a staple food, particularly in hard times; silos of wattleseeds are found in every Gunnagal city as a vital protection against famine.  Wattleseed oil, however, requires extensive processing to extract.  Wattle seeds contain most of their vegetable fat in a small aril attached to the main seed.  The Gunnagal have learned to separate this aril from the seeds before they are ground into flour, using a particularly fine knife of copper or obsidian.  This is a laborious process, usually done by children who have smaller fingers and keen eyesight to cut the arils from tens of thousands of seeds.  The fat-rich arils are then turned into a form of vegetable oil, which is mostly used for flavouring, and even then available only to the elite.  The most ostentatious use of wattleseed oil is for frying.  One of the favoured methods is to cut yams into small wedges and then fry them in wattleseed oil on a hot metal pan for a few moments, until crispy brown.  Only a few among the Gunnagal are wealthy enough to use wattleseed oil in such a profligate, but tasty, manner.

While the fields and lakes supply their food, the Gunnagal are bound to the river.  It supplies them with a rich lifestyle; six cities and more than two dozen smaller towns and settlements are dotted along its length.  The Murray is a source of life-giving water for drinking and for their wetlands, and it is their primary means of transportation.  All their main cities are on the Murray, and no town and few farms are more than a day’s march away from the river or one of its tributaries.  Without beasts of burden and few decent roads, the Gunnagal rely on the river to move their goods.  The Murray is crowded with boats large and small, some with sails, some with oars, and some towed by men on the banks.  Only riverine transport can supply the city-dwellers’ insatiable demands for food, wood, and clay; only boats can support such a volume of long-range trade in metal, textiles, pottery, dyes, spices, and other trade and manufactured goods.

The Gunnagal have become a numerous people beyond the imaginings of their forebears who lived alongside one swan-inhabited lagoon, and of those people, about one in four live in towns or cities.  The easternmost outpost of the Gunnagal civilization is a small town at Tintaldra [4], where workers often harvest timber which is easily floated downstream, and where miners have started to explore some of the copper deposits in the region.  Tintaldra and some other smaller nearby towns are under the aegis of the largest of the Gunnagal cities.  Gundabingee, located a little east of what would someday become the town of Corowa, is a flourishing city at the heart of some of the best agricultural land in Australia, and it has a permanent population of around thirty thousand inhabitants.

Gundabingee is one of the Wisdom Cities, and while it is the largest, there are five more, each of which has a population of ten thousand or more.  Tocumwal, with some of the most extensive wetlands along the entire Murray, has some eighteen thousand inhabitants.  Echuca has about fifteen thousand people, while the ancient centre of Swan Hill has around twenty-two thousand dwellers.  Downstream of Swan Hill, as the river moves ever westward, the surrounding countryside becomes drier and the wetlands harder to sustain.

Robinvale, the fifth of the Wisdom Cities, has about ten thousand inhabitants, but it draws from a much larger agricultural hinterland than the cities further upstream.  Robinvale controls a series of smaller towns, with its westernmost outpost around Mildura, beyond which there is a large region of only thinly-inhabited land.  This area is the driest part of the Murray Valley, where the rainfall is poor enough that even the drought-tolerant farming of the Gunnagal is marginal.  They do not irrigate crops in any meaningful way, with their waterworks more focused on supplying fish, and so there is only a small population in this area.  Yet this is not the last of the Wisdom Cities.  The last great Gunnagal city is Murray Bridge, separated by a considerable distance from the other main Gunnagal centres, but which has grown rich from the flourishing trade in copper, lead and silver.

The Gunnagal have many towns and settlements, but the Wisdom Cities have an exalted status which goes far beyond merely large size.  Each of the Wisdom Cities has a recognised body of religious government, a Council of Elders, which is honoured even in their rival cities.  The elders are those whose houses will be recognised by much later archaeologists as indicating signs of social stratification, with the accumulation of high-value goods and individual shrines, but no excavation can reveal the full function of the councils.  Elders win that distinction not because of advancing years, but because of recognised wisdom, and age is not considered an automatic guarantee of wisdom.  Many elders are indeed advanced in years by the standards of early agricultural peoples, but there are those who are young and considered wise, while many city-dwellers are old but are not considered wise.

Government by Council has some variations between the Wisdom Cities, but at least in outward tradition it is similar.  The office of elder is not formally hereditary, and a new elder must be recognised by the combined consensus of the existing elders.  In many cases, the rank is nonetheless inherited, for elders are not just the nobles and priests of this era, they are also the merchants of the times.  They trade in goods moved along the Water Mother, and sometimes in the rarer goods like alabaster, ochre and opals which are moved over land.

With inherited wealth comes power, and it is a rare occasion when a council will spurn the son of a current elder, although there are always exceptions.  Politics within the councils are complex, fractious, and full of factions and rivalries; the intrigues often defy the comprehension of ordinary citizens within their own cities, let alone those who try to understand them from a distance of three millennia.  While formally the decisions of any council need a consensus, there are many ways of achieving agreement.  Some are dominated by a smaller group of oligarchs who hold the true power; in the case of Tocumwal, there is a single family which rules the Council in all but name, and whose leading member would be considered the monarch if the Gunnagal had such a concept.  In the case of Swan Hill, oldest of the Wisdom Cities, the institution of the Council has stayed closest to its roots, and it remains governed by the principle of equality of mistrust.  The elders are heads of rival merchant and religious families who sometimes find it necessary to cooperate and strike compromises, but who will always act to bring down any individual elder who is thought to be accumulating too much power.

As priests and merchants, the Councils are responsible for following the established law and customs of their predecessors.  They oversee marriages, resolve disputes between individuals and families, and in theory are the guardians of traditional lore.  Many of these duties are delegated to a smaller caste within the elders, whose rank translates as ‘stick-men.’  Named for the ancient means of communication between distinct peoples [5], the stick-men have made an art of memorisation, using chants, mnemonics and other practices to allow them to recall the accumulated oral law of their city.  Once a year, in the Goldentime of spring which marks the passage of the new year, each of the Wisdom Cities holds a great festival which lasts for three days.  Most of this time is taken up with feasting, social gatherings, dances, song and the like, but at the dawn of each day, the stick-men take turns to recite passages from the oral law code of their city, in such a way that over the three days, the entirety of the law code is retold for all listeners to hear [6].

In keeping with their wealth, elders have a much greater variety of clothes to choose from than the average citizen, but on formal or religious occasions (which are often synonymous) they wear possum-skin cloaks as a mark of their rank.  Ordinary citizens usually wear an all-purpose linen kilt around the waist, knee-length for men and ankle-length for women, dyed into a personalised pattern.  During colder weather they wear a linen cloak with a similar pattern.  This not all the decoration that people wear, for the Gunnagal decorate everything: skin, jewellery, household walls, tools, everything.  Every citizen will have some form of personal decoration which is the symbol of one or more of their totems, but they have decoration almost everywhere else, too.  Painted clay figurines are common, murals are on most walls, and everyone uses the most elaborate jewellery which they can afford.  Even their copper and arsenical bronze axes and knives have patterns of fine lines etched into them when they are forged, not enough to weaken their primary purpose, but to give them a more aesthetically pleasing appearance.  Indeed, even city walls are decorated; ochre is mixed into the upper layers of rammed earth in each wall to give a decorative pinkish-red tint to the tops of city walls.

The Gunnagal systems of decorations are complex, often adopted merely for the aesthetic appearance, but they also serve important social functions.  The Gunnagal have an intricate set of social relationships, kinship patterns, and customs of respect and mutual avoidance.  The core of this system is the division of all Gunnagal people into a set of eight kinship classes called kitjigal (literally, skin groups).  Every Gunnagal is born into a particular kitjigal, which changes over the generations, based on their father or mother’s kitjigal.  All members of the same kitjigal are considered to be relatives; members of the same kitjigal who are born into the same generation will refer to each other as ‘brother’ or ‘sister,’ and there is an intricate vocabulary of social terms to refer to members of the same kitjigal who are of different generations.  Since all members of the same kitjigal are considered relatives, they will support each other even if their own cities are at war; warriors of the same kitjigal will refuse to fight each other, for instance.  Marriage between members of the same kitjigal is always considered to be incest, and there is a complex set of relationships which allows marriage only between certain kitjigal and forbids others.

Each of the kitjigal is named for a colour – gray, white, black, gold, blue, azure, green, and red – and each has its own set of totems [7].  Every adult Gunnagal, and most children, will wear the representation of one or more of their totems at all times, and their personalised decorations for their clothing will usually include their kitjigal’s colour as part of the pattern.  The social patterns of the kitjigal will dictate both individual and political relationships throughout the lives of every Gunnagal.  Marriages and inheritance are the most obvious example of these, with children of one kitjigal changing to another in every generation as part of a complex pattern [8].  Yet the relationships are broader; in politics it is considered important for each kitjigal to be represented equally amongst each city’s elders, and rivalries are often shaped by kinship cycles.  Marriages amongst the Gunnagal are often arranged from birth as part of these social arrangements; even when marriages are individual love-matches, the marriage ceremony requires the approval and then the participation of an elder from the kitjigal of both bride and groom.

Even during informal social and recreational events, the codes of the kitjigal predominate.  The most common sport amongst the Gunnagal is well-represented in their artistic traditions, and archaeologists will christen it, with inspiring mundanity, as the ‘ball-game.’  Depictions of descendant games will be recognised amongst many successor cultures to the Gunnagal, and it will usually be inferred to have had some religious significance.  In fact, the ball-games – there are many variations – are used purely for recreational purposes, and are played at most social gatherings.  In their basic form, the ball-games are played used a ball (usually of possum skin), which is kicked between a large number of players.  The aim of the game is usually not to let the ball touch the ground, and the last player to catch the ball drop-kicks it again.  Sometimes the game is played for points, other times just for entertainment, but in all cases, people of the same kitjigal will automatically be on the same team whenever the game is played.  The same principles apply to other Gunnagal sports such as wrestling, where even in championships wrestlers of the same kitjigal will not compete against each other.

The social system of the kitjigal links the polities of the Gunnagal.  Since all people of the same kitjigal are considered relatives, even from rival cities, this allows for channels of communication and hospitality to remain open even during troubled times.  Such occasions are relatively rare; while the Gunnagal cities are often rivals, they have customary limits on the practices of warfare.  Each of the six Wisdom Cities has recognised borders marked by boundary stones, and the Council of each city is supreme within those borders.  Warfare, when it does come, is usually border warfare, for rangelands or other territory.  Even then, warfare is usually ritualised.  Gunnagal elders themselves do not take up arms, but many of their younger sons join a dedicated warrior caste, who are recognised and trained from childhood.  During peacetime social gatherings between polities, warriors will fight honour duels with each other to first blood, or occasionally to the death.  Formal warfare follows similar rules, with battles often being decided by a set number of duels between the two sides, although these duels are usually to the death.

Military tactics are not particularly advanced; even when rival cities cannot agree on terms for a contest of duels, the two armies will usually meet on a chosen field.  Battle tactics generally consist of both armies forming a rough line of battle, flinging taunts and boasts at one another, until one warrior decides to charge, and his comrades will follow him into a battle which rapidly degenerates into individual contests.  Even during the middle of a battle, it is considered extremely poor form to interrupt two individual soldiers who are fighting, or to strike quickly without recognising one’s opponent, in case it turns out that the two warriors were of the same kitjigal.  For the same reason, ranged weapons are frowned upon during warfare; throwing spears and other missile weapons are considered tools for hunters, not warriors.

Underlying the traditions of the kitjigal, of warfare, and indeed all of Gunnagal society, are their religious beliefs.  The beliefs of the Gunnagal are complex and not always coherent; in a culture with no writing system and no overall religious hierarchy, there is nothing to enforce total conformity.  In its essence, though, the Gunnagal religious world-view is shaped by their concept of time and of fate.  To them, time is non-linear; they do not see the world in terms of past, present and future.  They see the immediate world as being the present time, but which is touched by what they call the Evertime.  The Evertime is both what was and what will come to be.  A person’s current actions are reflected in the Evertime, but not in a linear way; the Gunnagal see no functional difference between a person’s actions affecting the past as much as the future.  Dreams are considered to be extremely important, as they are the most direct link between the present time and the Evertime.  One of the most important roles of elders is to interpret dreams, which are variously seen as omens, as warnings, as visions of the past or future, or as answers to questions which the dreamer has been pondering.

The Gunnagal see the Evertime as populated by a variety of beings, some powerful, some mischievous, and some insignificant.  The most powerful of these are a set of beings regarded as being responsible for the shaping of the world.  To the Gunnagal, the world itself is eternal, but the creator beings have made the world into its form.  In keeping with their non-linear view of time, the Gunnagal see creation as a continuous, ongoing process.  For instance, they view the River Murray as the Water Mother, who has shaped the river’s course, but they speak of the Water Mother as if she were still creating the Murray every day.  Some days, the Water Mother makes the course of the river anew, which is why the Murray sometimes shifts its course slightly.  Lightning Man is another important creation being, who shapes the storms and brings down lightning and thunder, but to the Gunnagal, all storms past, present and future are part of the same act of creation.  The Gunnagal see all the creator beings – the Fire Brothers, the Rainbow Serpent, the Green Lady, Eagle, Bark Man, She Who Must Not Be Named, and several others – in the same way.

Aside from the great creator beings, the Gunnagal also believe that their extended family (both ancestors and descendants) live in the Evertime.  Until they are resurrected, at least; the Gunnagal believe in reincarnation of the spirit, in human, animal or plant form.  The Evertime is also inhabited by a variety of lesser beings, which are thought of as mischievous and which sometimes cross over to the present time and interfere with human affairs.  Elders are responsible for knowing the traditional lore needed to placate, bargain with, or drive away such beings.  Elders are also seen as responsible for communicating with the greater creator beings, although these beings are seen as more distant and often implacable.  The Water Mother is seen as the most important of the creator beings; the Gunnagal do not like to wander far from the Mother’s embrace.  They are reluctant to settle anywhere far from the Murray or one of its tributaries; traders and travellers who leave the Murray swear an oath to return as soon as they practically can, and ask that their body be carried back even if they die elsewhere [9].

In their religion, then, as in so much else, the Gunnagal appear to be flourishing in the Late Formative.  They have several large cities, and their agriculture supports a total population of nearly one million.  They know how to work in copper, silver, lead, and are starting to work with arsenical bronze.  They have a dynamic tradition of artwork in paintings, figurines, dyes, and other mediums.  They do not have a system of writing, but they have a developing tradition of proto-writing.  The archaeological record will not show all of the details, but it will confirm their apparent success.

Which makes what happens next all the more puzzling for archaeologists to explain.

--

[1] This is similar to how yams are used in parts of Africa, where they are formed into a staple food called fufu.

[2] Beefsteak fungus (Fistulina hepatica) exists in the wild both in Australia and on several other continents.  Historically, it has often been cultivated as a meat substitute, and indeed is still sometimes grown for this purpose in a few European countries.  Aboriginal people harvested the wild fungus, and it seems likely that they would cultivate it (as has happened elsewhere in the world) if they have also adopted farming.

[3] The Australian native raspberry (Rubus parvifolius) is a close relative of domesticated raspberries (R. idaeus and R. strigosus), produces similar-tasting fruit and has similar growing requirements, although it is much more drought-tolerant.  Australia also has a variety of plants which are suitable as spices.  Aboriginal peoples harvested many species as flavourings, and several of them have been cultivated or used by more recent immigrants as well.  River mint (Mentha australis) is a widely-distributed plant in south-eastern Australia whose leaves have a distinctive spearmint flavour.  Mountain peppers (Tasmannia lanceolata) have been cultivated both in Australia and overseas as a spice.  Sea celery (Apium prostratum) is an Australian relative of common celery (A. graveolens), which grows along much of the coast of Australia.  Sea celery is used as a vegetable and flavouring by the Gunnagal, in much the same way as common celery is used in other parts of the world.  (Sea celery was harvested by early European colonial settlers as a celery substitute).

[4] For clarity and ease of reference, all of the towns listed here (apart from Gundabingee) are listed by their contemporary Australian names, not the native name.

[5] Message-sticks were a form of communication used by Aboriginal peoples to transmit information between different groups, particularly those who spoke different languages.  They consisted of solid sticks of wood with patterns of dots and lines to convey information, and which could be carried by messengers for hundreds of kilometres.  They could be used for a number of purposes, but one of the most common was to announce a gathering of many peoples for religious or social events.  This sense of using message sticks to announce gatherings has carried over into the Gunnagal, where the stick-men open the yearly festivals which announce the laws and customs which all of the peoples follow.

[6] This accumulated law is a series of guiding principles and a few historical cases, rather than a strict law code.

[7] The eight kitjigal are given names which are usually translated as colours, and they also have a number of totems.  These totems often match the colour-names, but not always; the colour-name represents an underlying concept and has a number of connotations.  The totems fit with these connotations, not necessarily the colour itself.  For instance, the Gunnagal associate (medium and dark) blue with water and rainfall, which for them for them is an occasion welcomed with joy and laughter.  So one of the totems for blue is the laughing kookaburra, a bird which sounds like it is laughing, but which is not blue.  (This is comparable to common connotations of colours in English, where green is associated with envy, for instance).

The colours and their associated totems are as follows.

Gray has three totems, the eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), sandstone (regardless of colour), and what the Gunnagal call rain clouds, which in modern terms would be nimbostratus.

White has four totems, the long-billed corella (Cacatua tenuirostris), the little egret (Egretta garzetta), granite, and lightning.

Black has four totems, the snake-necked turtle (Chelodina longicollis), the Australian raven (Corvus coronoides), the perentie aka “that bloody big lizard” (Varanus giganteus), and the new moon.

Gold has four totems, the golden perch (Macquaria ambigua), wattle flowers, obsidian, and shooting stars.

Blue, to the Gunnagal, is a colour which includes shades which English-speakers would classify as medium and dark blue, but not light blue.  Blue has four totems, the laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), sand goanna (Varanus gouldii), the morning star (Venus ascendant), and raindrops.

Azure (or light blue) is a colour which the Gunnagal consider to be separate from blue in the same way that English-speakers distinguish between red and light red (pink).  Azure has four totems, the wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax), the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), orchid flowers, and strong wind.

Green has four totems, the common wombat (Vombatus ursinus), quartz, eucalyptus flowers, and the crescent moon.

Red has four totems, the dingo (Canis lupus dingo), the common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula), the evening star (Venus descendant), and northerly winds.  Northerly winds are associated with red since these hot winds, blowing from Australia’s arid interior, fan the worst summer bushfires.

[8] There are many intricacies about which kitjigal can marry which, and the terms which are used when addressing others vary along similar lines.  (All members of the same kitjigal as a person’s father will be politely referred to as ‘father’, for instance.)  For descent, a child’s kitjigal shifts according their parent of the same gender.  In the male line, the kitjigal are divided into two groups of four, with the pattern repeating every four generations.  Blue fathers have red sons, red fathers have black sons, black fathers have gold sons, and gold fathers have blue sons.  The other group sees azure fathers have white sons, white fathers have green sons, green fathers have gray sons, and gray fathers have azure sons.  For women, the corresponding groups are blue to black to white to gray (then back to blue), and red to gold to azure to green (then back to red).

[9] This is one reason why early agriculture spreads only slowly from its heartland in the Murray; the religious attachments mean that very few Gunnagal want to abandon the vicinity of the Murray.  The Gunnagal possess a dryland agricultural package which is not limited to areas of irrigation or high rainfall; their crops are drought-tolerant, and their main domesticated animal, the Australian wood duck, does not need significant contact with water.  Indeed, the Gunnagal themselves do not usually irrigate their crops even when living along the Murray; their efforts at waterworks are more focused on aquaculture.  This means that knowledge of Australian domesticated crops does not spread readily beyond the Murray Valley until the Gunnagal themselves find a reason to leave their homelands.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #6: Collapse and Rebirth

The history of archaeology, like so many of the sciences, is replete with disagreements and unanswered questions, with established consensuses which are overturned by new discoveries or new theses.  Unsolved mysteries are an appealling target for applying the scientific method, and an intriguing unanswered question raises interest and often tempers.  To be a useful question, there need to be several elements.  A good archaeological question requires enough information to propose detailed explanations, but insufficient information to provide a definitive answer.  Preferably, there should be strong-willed personalities amongst the researchers; all the better to ensure heated arguments and vehement testing of proposals.  Ideally, a good question also needs to be about a civilization which people care about, one which is well-known enough or has enough popular appeal so that arguments over an archaeological controversy spill over into the wider world.

The fate of the Murray civilization will produce one of the most long-lasting questions in the allohistory of archaeology.

The archaeological record of the early Murray civilization is one of gradually growing population, flourishing cities, and developing technology.  At the beginning of the Formative Era in 2500 BC, there was one urban centre with a population of roughly five hundred people.  At the conventional date for the end of the Formative Era, in 900 BC, there were six major cities with a combined urban population of about one hundred thousand people.  Yet over the next two centuries, the cities along the Murray collapsed.  Four of them were abandoned entirely, and the remaining two were reduced to mere villages in comparison to what they had been.  Many of the smaller settlements were similarly abandoned or depopulated.  The three centuries between 900 and 600 BC will usually be referred to as the Interregnum, a time of severe population decline along the Murray, of near-disappearance of trade, of the abandonment of many of the old cultural icons.  This was the time when most of the old artistic styles vanished almost completely, along with so much else.  It would take most of another millennium for the population of the Murray basin to recover to its former levels, and some of the major cities would never be rebuilt.

What caused the collapse of the Murray civilization?  There will be many theories, many ideas, and many conflicting interpretations of the evidence.  A few authorities will argue that there was no complete collapse at all, emphasising the continuity of culture, while a few authorities will go to the other extreme and argue that the new civilizations which arose owed very little to their forebears.  Yet most researchers will agree that the collapse was severe and wide-ranging, but that that it did not involve complete cultural replacement.  Unfortunately, that is the limit of their agreement.

The number of proposed explanations for the collapse of the Formative Gunnagal is immense; over sixty different theories or variations of theories will be proposed to account for the mystery.  Setting aside esoteric and supernatural proposals, five main groups of theories are proposed, although archaeologists are unlikely to ever reach a definitive answer.  Such are the problems of conducting archaeological research on sites which pre-date the invention of writing.

One group of theories ascribes the collapse of the Formative Gunnagal to destructive warfare, either from foreign invasion or from increasing internecine struggles between the Murray city-states.  This proposal finds some support from archaeological evidence; excavations have found that the great city of Murray Bridge was systematically looted and burned at about 900 BC, right at the beginning of the Interregnum.  A few of the smaller urban centres show similar destruction, at dates which are spread throughout the Interregnum; among them, the easternmost outpost at Tintaldra was similarly burned sometime around 810 BC.  Yet most of the other major urban centres do not show much evidence of destruction, which makes theories of invasion or warfare difficult to support.

Explanations based on destructive warfare will also be criticised on a lack of direct evidence for who these invaders or great warriors might have been.  The early Murray civilization was the bastion of farming in what was otherwise a continent of hunter-gatherers (apart from the early Junditmara, who were too far away).  There is no evidence of any peoples who might have been numerous enough to invade the Murray basin.  Internecine warfare amongst the Murray city-states might have been a possibility, but what evidence is available does not suggest that the city-states were particularly war-like or that they had the military capacity to wipe each other out so thoroughly.

There is some evidence of internal migration within the Murray basin, which might suggest some effects of warfare.  During the Formative Era, particular crops such as wattles were usually geographically limited to near the area of original domestication [1].  These agricultural patterns were largely stable throughout the fourteen hundred years of the Formative Era, yet during the Interregnum each of these domesticated wattles were spread throughout the Murray basin.  Some authorities argue that this is evidence that invaders moved and brought their crops with them, while others argue that it is more likely that any internal migrations were the effects of the collapse, with survivors fleeing abandoned cities and bringing their crops and other knowledge with them to other areas of the Murray.

Another group of theories relates to environmental or climatic factors.  These theories ascribe the collapse of the Murray civilization to famine brought about by recurrent droughts or increased bushfires destroying harvests for repeated years.  Surviving examples of Late Formative Murray burials are few, but of those which are excavated, archaeologists will notice a gradual decrease in the height of skeletons, which is taken to be evidence of malnutrition or other effects of famine.  According to the environmental collapse theories, droughts or increased bushfires were the underlying cause, and the struggle for limited resources caused some of the destruction attested in the archaeological record.

These theories find some support from studies of tree ring patterns, which show a substantial increase in the number and severity of bushfires during the Interregnum when compared to the preceding period.  Critics of the environmental collapse theories will argue that the increased bushfires are more likely to be an effect of the collapse rather than the cause.  The Murray civilization had been living in a region with severe bushfires for over a millennium, and should have known how to limit the effects of bushfires by protective burning.  These critics argue that the severe bushfires of the Interregnum were the result of the collapsing human population no longer maintaining effective burn-offs on their own, and thus natural bushfires became more severe.

A third group of theories will ascribe the collapse of the Murray civilization to internal revolution or social turmoil.  According to these theories, unrest and dissatisfaction with the elites led to social unrest and revolution.  Researchers who support these theories point to the evidence of destruction excavated at Murray Bridge and elsewhere as being rooted in social unrest, not foreign invasion.  Direct confirmation of these theories are difficult, due to the lack of written sources, but their critics will point out that, as with the theories of foreign invasion, the evidence of destruction applies to only a few cities.  It is difficult to explain how social unrest could have been widespread enough to depopulate most of the Murray cities.  Even if the social elites were destroyed through revolution, this leads raises the question of where the rebel populations moved to, and why they abandoned so many cities.

A fourth group of theories will seek to explain the collapse of the Murray civilization in terms of a spread of disease.  Some researchers favour a disease explanation because the spread of a new disease or diseases could explain rapid initial depopulation, and persistent endemic diseases as slowing population recovery.  While no direct evidence of disease survives in the archaeological record, proponents of this theory argue that the expansion of human-created wetlands throughout the Formative Era created the perfect environment for harbouring pathogens and encouraging insect-borne transmission of infectious diseases.  Objections to this theory will come principally from lack of evidence.  While later civilizations along the Murray are known to harbour epidemic diseases, none of these diseases can be traced to this era or are known to be linked to insect vectors.

The fifth group of theories will ascribe the collapse of the Murray civilization to systemic ecological collapse.  According to these researchers, the history of the Late Formative was one of expanding population placing ever-greater pressure on the natural resources of the Murray.  Ever more intensive farming is believed to be exhausting the soil, and increasing hunting and fishing is thought to deplete the supply of protein-rich foods.  According to these researchers, over-use of the land led to exhausted and sometimes eroded soils, famines, and then competition for limited resources led to destructive warfare and the abandonment of many of the urban centres as the remaining inhabitants reverted to subsistence farming.

What future archaeologists will probably never be able to find out is that most of these theories capture part of the explanation, but that none of them give a complete account.  For the truth of the collapse of the Gunnagal civilization is found in a series of unfortunate events, some of their own making, some imposed by nature.

Throughout the Late Formative period, the population of the Murray basin boomed, aided by the development of arsenical bronze tools, and by a steady supply of food from the agricultural package of crops which they had developed.  Yet their farming methods were still, in some respects, quite primitive.  Red yams were the basis of their diet, but like all yams, they are hard on the soil.  Farmers of red yams faced ever-decreasing yields when working on the same fields, which they could resolve only by moving on to new territory, leaving the land fallow for several years, and which provoked more territorial rivalry between the city-states.

While the Gunnagal as a whole had access to several wattle species, most of them had not spread far from their original area of domestication.  This meant that their farmers were more vulnerable to pests and diseases which affected single crops.  The Gunnagal farmers had not yet recognised the potential of wattles to revitalise the soil, which would have let them rotate their crops between yams and wattles.  Without this realisation, the Gunnagal faced declining farming yields from yams and the emergence of several pest species which preyed on wattles, which made their farming increasingly marginal.  The same pressure for food meant that their fishing and hunting grounds were gradually being exhausted, which made their population even more vulnerable to famine and other misfortune.

By 950 BC, the Murray civilization, although still heavily-populated, was nearing its Malthusian limits and merely awaiting a trigger for disaster.  Calamity would not be long in coming.  The climate of south-eastern Australia had been relatively stable for the last few thousand years, but in 1000 BC, the region entered a severe dry spell which would last for nearly a millennium.  Rainfall declined, droughts became more prevalent, and already marginal farming yields plummeted.  Much of the Lower Murray became too arid to support farming, and while in some areas agriculture could continue, reduced yields meant that this could not sustain the large populations seen at the height of the Late Formative.

At first, the western regions of the Lower Murray were the most badly-affected.  The great centre of Murray Bridge, heartland of mining and the only large-scale source of copper and arsenical bronze, became so arid that farming could not be easily sustained.  The leaders of the great city responded by trying to force more of the population into mining, to extract more of the valuable copper which could be used to trade for food from the still-fertile areas upstream.  This worked in the short-term, but provoked social unrest which developed into revolution.  In 898 BC, a revolt in the mines spread to the great city itself, which was burned to the ground.  The surviving residents abandoned the city; some fleeing into wetter regions to the west and south, a few escaping upstream, while others reverted to subsistence farming and eking a precarious existence in rural areas around the vanished city.

With the destruction of Murray Bridge, one of the six great cities had been removed from the map.  Tragically for the peoples of the Murray basin, this had been the key source of their metal.  A couple of much smaller deposits were known in the highlands in the Upper Murray, but these were insufficient to meet demand.  Copper and bronze were now almost-irreplaceable commodities, and re-smelting and re-use of metal would not be sufficient.  Intensive farming had required more use of bronze tools to clear land and for digging, and this metal in particular was very difficult to obtain.  Civilization gradually fell apart in the Murray, with prolonged famines ravaging the population, and long-range trade declining amongst the Gunnagal cities.  Warfare became more intense in competition over dwindling resources, and the eventual result was collapse.

The collapse of the early Murray civilization was relatively swift, although not complete.  Of the six great cities, four were abandoned entirely.  Murray Bridge was destroyed through internal revolution.  Robinvale was not destroyed directly, but its position in an already semi-arid area made it vulnerable to prolonged drought.  Farming became marginal enough that even the Gunnagal agricultural package could not supply the food surpluses needed to sustain a large city, and the people who dwelt there needed to move on or revert to subsistence farming.  Echuca and Tocumwal found themselves caught between the collapse of their wetlands, which was particularly severe given the drought and the pressure of warfare from the larger centres of Swan Hill and Gundabingee.  The end result was that Echuca and Tocumwal were abandoned, although some of the survivors founded a new outpost between those cities, at a place they would call Weenaratta, which in time would grow into a city of great renown.

All that remained of the Murray civilization, or so it appeared, were the former two largest cities of Swan Hill and Gundabingee.  Both of these suffered severe population decline during the Interregnum, a result of famine, endemic warfare, and emigration outside the Murray basin.  Yet they did survive, reaching their nadir around 750 BC when both cities had only about two or three thousand permanent inhabitants.  After that time, they began a slow recovery, although it would take a very long time for the Murray civilizations to regain their former glory.

--

History teaches that when it comes to conflict between farmers and hunter-gatherers, farmers almost always win.  As individuals, hunter-gatherers were normally much healthier than farmers; the diet of early farmers was more nutritionally limited and the workload much higher.  As a group, though, farmers were much more numerous.  Unless the climate turns unsuitable for agriculture, then farmers usually have an immense weight of numbers which means that they can displace hunter-gatherers.  When one group of peoples adopts agriculture but their neighbours do not, this can often mean substantial shifts in population, particularly if the agriculturalists also have other advantages such as metal tools and domesticated animals.

One of the most dramatic examples of such population shifts is the Bantu expansion which transformed southern Africa.  Before the Bantu expansion, the southern half of Africa was inhabited by a variety of hunter-gatherer peoples, including the ancestors of modern Khoisan-speaking peoples and the “pygmies” of the central African jungles.  In a series of migrations from their homelands in modern Cameroon and Nigeria, Bantu-speaking farmers pushed into hunter-gatherer territory and displaced most of the hunter-gatherer peoples throughout southern Africa.  There were a few holdouts, mostly in areas where farming was unsustainable, but the Bantu-speakers came to dominate Africa south of the equator.

Allohistory teaches of another dramatic example of a population shift; the Great Migrations which transformed southern Australia.  In 1000 BC, Australia was mostly a domain of hunter-gatherers.  Agriculture was confined almost exclusively to the Murray basin, where the Gunnagal had a thriving but geographically limited civilization; almost all of the farmers lived within a day’s march of the winding Murray.  Some cultivation of crops had started to spread slowly beyond this narrow band of land, but the Gunnagal had a technological and spiritual link to the river which meant that they abandoned it only reluctantly.  Apart from the Gunnagal, the Australian continent held a great many peoples and languages, but the only other sedentary civilization was the eel-farming Junditmara, who occupied a couple of hundred square kilometres of south-western Victoria.

All of this would change with the collapse of the Gunnagal.  This was a time of prolonged drought, of internecine warfare, but it was also a time of large-scale population movements.  Some of these population movements were within the Murray basin itself, as people moved up and down the river.  This allowed more sharing of ideas, goods and crops, which in time would stimulate a new cultural and technological flowering along the Murray.  More of the population movements would be those of people abandoning their ancestral homelands.  The calamities of the collapse broke the cultural link to the river, and the Gunnagal began to expand over much larger territory.

The Gunnagal migrants who abandoned the Murray did so for a variety of reasons, fleeing famine or revolution, defeated in warfare, or pursuing tales of opportunity from their predecessors.  Regardless of their motivation, they had the same set of advantages; an agricultural package of crops which could grow on all but the most arid lands, and knowledge of how to smelt and work copper.  They had lost access to the great copper mines of the Lower Murray which had sustained the Gunnagal, but the Australian landscape contained many small deposits of copper which were sufficient to sustain the tool and weapon-making needs of the bands of migrants moving out of the Murray in the Great Migrations.

From their homelands along the Murray, the descendants of the Gunnagal expanded in all directions, taking their crops with them.  The expansion gained its momentum from the initial flood of refugees leaving the drought-stricken Lower Murray, but it gained a life of its own, with the Gunnagal farmers still pushing into new territories long after the population along the Murray had stabilised.  The Great Migrations transformed Australia, as agricultural societies displaced hunter-gatherers throughout the southern half of the continent.  In the north, the stream of migrants stopped only when they reached the tropics, where the warmer climate and different growing seasons did not suit their staple crops of red yams and murnong [2].  In the west, they stopped only when they reached the aridity of the interior.  In the south and east, they halted only when they reached the sea.  From the Tropic of Capricorn to Bass Strait, from the Tasman Sea to Australia’s red heart, the region was transformed with the advent of agriculture.

The Great Migrations began in 900 BC, and lasted for over a millennium.  They were not a continuous advance, but a series of population movements in many directions, sometimes with agricultural peoples moving back into already-settled areas, and a process of warfare with some leapfrog advances far into new territory while the areas in between remained controlled by hunter-gatherers.  The first Gunnagal settlers displaced by war fled eastward across the Great Dividing Ranges through the Southern Highlands to reach Australia’s eastern coast by 600 BC, but most of the eastern seaboard would not be colonised by agricultural peoples for another three centuries.  Pioneering Gunnagal migrants followed the River Darling and were growing red yams near Roma in Queensland by 500 BC, at near the northern limit of that crop’s range, but the full displacement of non-Gunnagal peoples from this region would take another four hundred years.  The conventional date for the end of the Great Migrations is 200 AD, although Gunnagal settlers had reached most of south-eastern Australia a least a century before that.  Most of the last hundred years was a process of consolidation of control over this territory, where the remaining hunter-gatherers were displaced or took up Gunnagal farming ways.

The Great Migrations were a combination of colonisation, assimilation and military expansion.  Hunter-gatherer societies did not survive the migrations, except where the peoples were pushed north into the tropics or west into the arid interior.  The pre-Gunnagal hunter-gatherers were not exterminated as individuals; many of the colonising Gunnagal intermarried with the local inhabitants.  Some elements of old beliefs survived the Great Migrations, especially place-names, and names of unfamiliar plants and animals.  Most of their accumulated knowledge of local flora and fauna survived, too.  But the diverse hunter-gatherer cultures and languages which had existed before the Great Migrations were transformed into a region of cultural unity.  This would later be referred to as Gunnagalia, although the inhabitants at the time did not have any conception of themselves as a coherent group.

Gunnagalia was a common cultural zone, the legacy of having such closely-related peoples expanding over such a wide area.  The early Gunnagal spoke one language, although dialects had begun to diverge even before they started leaving the Murray basin.  The migrations spread these dialects across Gunnagalia, and the dialects would diverge into separate languages over the next few centuries.  The Gunnagal likewise brought their religion, technology, and other accumulated lore with them, and left this legacy for their descendants.  This common legacy would be reflected in all the cultures and peoples who followed the early Gunnagal.

Yet while the Gunnagal migrations were extensive, they did not quite displace everyone who occupied the south-eastern regions of Australia.  There were three main hold-outs, areas where the pre-Gunnagal peoples preserved their own language and culture.  In south-western Victoria, the Junditmara had maintained a settled society with thousands of people long before the Gunnagal had learned to farm yams.  Gunnagal migrants brought yams, wattles and knowledge of metalworking to the Junditmara, but the migrants were absorbed into the Junditmara, rather than the other way around.  In north-eastern New South Wales, a hunter-gatherer people named the Bungudjimay occupied the Coffs Harbour region before the Great Migrations.  An early group of Gunnagal settlers entered that area, and were few enough in number that they became part of the Bungudjimay.  With this knowledge, the Bungudjimay took up farming and adopted a settled lifestyle before the main stream of Gunnagal migrants reached them.  The third group of hold-outs were in the Monaro plateau, an area of high country in southern New South Wales that includes some of the headwaters for the Murray, including one of its major tributaries, the Murrumbidgee.  Here, the altitude meant that red yams did not grow well, and farming developed using hybrids of domesticated murnong and a related alpine species [3], producing a new crop suited to these regions.  This meant that the Nguril and Kaoma peoples who lived there had time to take up farming rather than being displaced by Gunnagal immigrants.

The Great Migrations did not touch all of the fertile areas of southern Australia.  While they reached the south-eastern quarter of the continent, there was another fertile region of the south which they did not touch.  The fertile lands of south-western Australia are separated from the eastern regions by desert barriers, included a land so barren that the first European explorers in the region named it the land of no trees [4].  In allohistorical Australia, there was extremely tenuous contact between east and west, conducted via the peoples who lived in this arid region.  The desert barriers meant that no large-scale migrations were possible, but in time some crops and knowledge did diffuse across the barren lands.  Around 550 BC, the first red yams were being grown in Esperance, a fertile region at the western edge of the Nullarbor.  A few other crops would follow, such as bramble wattle and native flax, though many others did not make the crossing.  Yet those few crops allowed the Yuduwungu people of Esperance to develop sedentary societies, and in time they developed their own agricultural package of crops, including some plants not known further east.  The Yuduwungu had some very slight trade contact with peoples across the Nullarbor, enough for knowledge of metalworking and pottery to spread, although they developed their own unique styles.  In time, the Yuduwungu would begin their own migrations, spreading farming, their language and culture across the fertile regions of south-western Australia.

By around 200 AD, much of the southern half of Australia has become a land of farmers.  Hunter-gatherers still occupy the arid interior of the continent, but in the east and the west, agriculture is now widespread.  In most cases, these peoples are still quite thinly-spread, but the reliable food supply will allow their population to grow rapidly in the following centuries.  The foundations have been set for the development of complex societies and advancing technology.  Still, the most populous region of the continent remains the Murray basin, where the inhabitants started to recover from the collapse by around 600 BC.  The long-term result of the collapse would turn out to be not necessarily so bad; the changed conditions and internal population movements produced a variety of innovations.  In time, the heirs of the Gunnagal would share these new developments with Australia, too.

Although not all of these new developments would be welcome.

--

[1] Three main wattles were domesticated in different parts of the Murray basin.  The bramble wattle (Acacia victoriae) is adapted to the driest climates and usually grown in the Lower Murray, the mystery wattle (A. difformis) grows in the Middle Murray, while the golden wattle (A. pycnantha) is cultivated mostly in the higher-rainfall areas of the Upper Murray.

[2] A couple of the domesticated Australian crop species will actually grow further north than this, particularly the bramble wattle.  As a complete package of crops, however, the effective growing limit is a little south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

[3] Microseris scapigera, the alpine murnong, is well-adapted to the highland regions of south-eastern Australia.  (Some authorities class it as a subspecies of the common murnong, M. lanceolata, but either way, it is suitable for growing in highland areas.)

[4] This is the Nullarbor Plain.  Its name is sometimes thought to be of Aboriginal origin, but is in fact derived from Latin and means “no trees.”  The Nullarbor is an extremely harsh landscape, consisting largely of a limestone plateau which is indeed so arid that it doesn’t really support any trees.  Some Aboriginal peoples do live here (the Pila Nguru), although in relatively small numbers.  The arid Nullarbor is a substantial barrier to land communication between eastern and western Australia; not quite impassable, but nearly so without local knowledge.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #7: True Wealth

“Budetju-yu tjimang agu-yiba garr.”  This is an axiom amongst the people of Tjibarr [Swan Hill], spoken after the worst of the Collapse.  In their dialect, this phrase means “all true wealth comes from the earth.”  This was a simple yet profound truth, amongst a people who had witnessed two centuries of environmental ruin, social upheaval, migration, and warfare.  To the people of Tjibarr, who still called themselves the Gunnagal, the earth was the source of all bounty.  Some wealth of stone or rare metal was dug from beneath the earth, but most of the wealth was grown from it.

In an era when a centuries-long drought persisted, there were increasing opportunities for anyone who could find ways to make the earth more productive.  The pressure on agricultural yields meant that farmers developed new solutions.  Early Gunnagal farmers had possessed only limited knowledge of techniques for replenishing the soil.  Amidst the struggle of the drought, they found new methods.  Their forefathers had long known of the value of burning areas of forest to promote the growth of their chosen crops, and Gunnagal farmers learned to use wood ash as fertiliser, along with dead wattle leaves and other organic matter.

Gunnagal farmers had often used wattles along the edges of yam fields, as a handy source of timber, to mark farm borders, and to act as shelter for small birds who fed on insect pests.  Observant farmers noticed that in times of declining yields, yams grown along the edges of fields, next to wattles, would grow larger than yams in the centres of fields [1].  This led to the development of new techniques for companion planting, where rows of wattles were interspersed amongst rows of yams.  It also led to methods of crop rotation, where wattles would be planted across exhausted yam-fields.  They would be allowed to grow for four years, producing a couple of harvests of seeds, and revitalising the soil while they grew.  The wattles would then be cut down as a source of timber, with their leaves mixed into the soil as further fertiliser, and new crops of yams grown on the revitalised soil.

Wattles, the trees whose name became the root of the Gunnagal word for wealth, were also developed in other ways.  The Formative Gunnagal had used several wattle species, but usually only one in a particular area.  With the population migrations, several species of domesticated wattles were spread across the Murray.  This gave farmers access to more kinds of wattles, including those which flower and seed at different times of the year [2].  The Gunnagal farmers developed a system of planting two different kinds of wattles on their farms, in roughly equal numbers.  This meant that they could harvest the wattle seeds in different months, spreading the labour required across the year, and allowing a given number of farmers to harvest a larger area.  This also meant that they had a greater variety of flavours available in their food, and had more protection from pests and diseases, since the same pests and diseases rarely affected both kinds of wattles.

Together, the new farming techniques gave the Gunnagal long-term agricultural stability, allowing them to sustain themselves indefinitely.  During the long centuries of the great drought, overall farming yields would still be lower than in former times, but they were more stable [3].  This allowed Gunnagal civilization to rebuild following the Collapse.  The population reached its lowest level around 750 BC, and from there, the Gunnagal began a slow recovery.  After this time, the Murray basin again became a source of fresh migrants while the Great Migrations transformed the Australian landscape.

The Collapse devastated the peoples of the Murray, but the long-term results were much less catastrophic.  The population dispersals of this era led to intermingling of new ideas, new crops, new artwork, and in time new religions.  The strains of the era, and the new resources which were made available with the Great Migrations, meant that in time new innovations and new technologies would be developed.  For after the Interregnum, a new civilization emerged along the Murray, which would become known to archaeology as the Classical Era.  As in its previous incarnation, the Classical Murray civilization saw the great river become a heartland of urbanisation, innovation, and cultural ferment.  Unlike its previous incarnation, the Classical Murray civilization did not stand alone.  It formed the heartland of an expanding region of agricultural societies.  Trade, technology, crops and ideas could now spread over a much wider region.  Ideas born along the Murray were no longer confined to its banks, and could disperse elsewhere.  Many of the new crops, ideas and trade would now originate from outside the Murray, and spread to it instead.

During the Interregnum, one of the most pressing constraints on the Gunnagal was the lack of reliable sources of metal.  Their pre-Collapse predecessors had possessed an abundance of copper and a reasonable supply of arsenical bronze, forged from natural impurities in the copper found in the Lower Murray.  With the pressures of the extended drought, mining had collapsed in the Lower Murray, leaving the surviving Gunnagal to search for alternative supplies of metal.  Some copper and arsenical bronze was reused and reforged, but access to fresh supplies of metal was quite poor during the Interregnum.  Some limited sources of copper existed in the upper reaches of the Murray, which were used throughout the Interregnum, but these lacked the necessary arsenic impurities to form bronze.

Due to the shortage of available metal, knowledge of bronze-working almost collapsed, but not quite.  For while arsenical bronze had served the Gunnagal well, most of the world’s civilizations have used bronze made out of tin instead.  The upper reaches of the Murray and its tributaries also contained some sources of tin, some as lodes which needed to be mined, but with some secondary deposits in riverbeds which were easily exploited.  Late in the Interregnum, the Gunnagal discovered the properties of alluvial tin, and how to forge it with copper to develop a more reliable type of bronze.  This discovery revitalised Gunnagal metalworking; they now had a reliable source of metal which could be used to develop much more effective tools.  Farming, warfare, stone-working and a host of other industries would be transformed through the availability of bronze tools.

By 450 BC, the Classical Gunnagal had firmly entered the Bronze Age, although their supplies of tin were limited enough that bronze was still a premium metal.  This changed over the next couple of centuries, thanks to events elsewhere in Australia.  The New England region in north-eastern New South Wales has rich farmland, which in historical Australia supplies a wide variety of crops.  Gunnagal migrants settled this region between 400 and 300 BC, and established productive farming communities.  In one part of this region, around the highlands of Inverell, the new settlers discovered that they had arrived at an area rich in mineral resources.  Here they found gemstones such as sapphires and diamonds which they polished and used as adornments, in the traditional Gunnagal manner.  Here, they also found rich sources of tin, including extremely useful native tin which they could exploit immediately.

Tin mining quickly expanded around Inverell, bringing considerable wealth for its inhabitants.  Trade routes carried Inverell tin and gems across the settled regions of the continent.  Inverell is located on the Gwydir River, which joins several other rivers before becoming part of the Darling, a long river which eventually joins with the Murray.  Transport by water meant that large quantities of tin could be exported to the great cities along the Murray, although tin was valuable enough that it was also carried overland to the eastern seaboard and other areas of the continent.  Thanks to exploitation of new sources of copper, bronze-working spread across Gunnagalia; the metal was still expensive, but at least it was available.

While valuable, tin was not the only discovery from outside the Murray which would spread back to the old heartlands.  The Great Migrations had won the Gunnagalic-speaking peoples access to the resources of half of the continent, sometimes from settlement and sometimes from traders and travellers who ventured beyond the borders of the agricultural regions.  The migrants who exploited the new regions found and domesticated new crops which grew there, and in time many of these spread back to the heartland of the Murray.

North of the Murray, the Gunnagal migrants found lands which grew ever drier, even by the standards of their old river lands.  In most of these lands, the Gunnagal could grow their old crops, although the yields were lower due to the reduced rainfall.  But they found new plants here, ones suited to the arid landscape, and some of these plants could be harvested and then domesticated.  They found and domesticated the desert lime, a relative of common citrus trees, and whose flavoursome fruit was occasionally eaten fresh, but which was normally used as a valued flavouring [4].

When desert limes reached the Murray, they were gladly adopted as a fruit, and their juice was used for flavouring food.  Still, their most valued use became as an additive to beverages.  The Gunnagal had long brewed an alcoholic drink from crushed yams.  Adding the pulp of desert limes to the brewing mixture produced a new kind of drink, ganyu, which became the beverage of choice during festivals and other ceremonial occasions.  Wealthier Gunnagal drunk varieties of ganyu which were further flavoured by spices traded from the eastern coast [5].

Migrants from the north also found another plant to be worth domesticating, the sweet quandong [6].  This is a tree which also grows in semi-arid areas, and whose fruit is large and sweet, by the usual standards of desert plants.  In a land with few large fruits, domesticated quandongs would become a treasured part of the Gunnagal diet, eaten fresh as a seasonal fruit or dried for later use.  Domesticated quandong trees give relatively large harvests, and not just from the fruit alone.  Quandong fruit contains a relative large nut in the centre (much like peaches), and this seed is itself edible – indeed, highly nutritious [7].  Farmers along the Murray would come to refer to the quandong as the “queen of fruits.”

Still, of all of the plants which the Gunnagal would come to cultivate, none would be more treasured than corkwood (Duboisia hopwoodii).  This is a shrub whose leaves and shoots contain high levels of nicotine.  In its wild form, corkwood is widespread throughout much of central Australia, but the form which was important grew in a much more geographically restricted area around the Mulligan River in modern Queensland.  Here, even during hunter-gatherer days, Aboriginal peoples came to harvest the leaves of these plants, which they collected in such abundance that they are thought to have been managing the land by deliberate farming.  Leaves of corkwood were dried, mixed with wood ash (usually from wattles), and rolled into a form of chewing tobacco, called kunduri, which was a highly prized drug.  Harvests of wild corkwood from this region saw kunduri become the basis of a trade network which stretched across large parts of the continent.  The preferred form of corkwood grew further north than the limits of Gunnagal agriculture, but they had enough contact with the traders to visit the region and bring back corkwood trees to cultivate [8].  In time, the cultivation of corkwood, and widespread use of kunduri, would spread to the Murray.

In the south, in the wetter regions near the coast of Victoria, Gunnagal migrants also discovered a variety of new plants which were suitable for domestication.  Here, they found new species of wattle, such as sallow wattle and gossamer wattle, which they started to cultivate alongside their more familiar wattles.  They found new fruits such as muntries and apple berries, and new vegetables such as Warrigal greens, which they also cultivated [9].  These new crops were treasured in the areas where they were native, and spread widely along the eastern coast of Australia.  In the Gunnagal heartlands along the Murray, though, they were of only limited value.  These new crops needed more rainfall than could usually be relied upon, and even during the Classical Era the Gunnagal rarely used irrigation for their crops.

Yet while crops from the south would not become widespread along the Murray, the south would provide other things which changed the nature of farming and society across the continent.  In south-western Victoria, the Junditmara chiefdoms had been sedentary societies even before agriculture reached them.  Now, they adopted not just new crops, but they also domesticated a new animal.  The tiger quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) is the largest marsupial carnivore on the Australian mainland, a predator of small mammals, birds and reptiles.  It occupies roughly the same ecological niche as cats do in the Old World, and indeed is similar enough in its habits that early European settlers called it the native pole-cat.  The tiger quoll is relatively easy to tame, and even in hunter-gatherer times it was occasionally kept as a pet.  With the adoption of farming, stored food often attracted rodent pests.  Tamed quolls were very useful in keeping down the numbers of rats and mice.  In time, this led to the domestication of the species [10].  Much like cats, quolls were mostly used by farmers to keep down the numbers of rats and mice, although a few were also adopted as household pets by the wealthy [11].

Still, of all the animals which the agricultural peoples of Australia would domesticate, one would be valued above all.  The emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) is a flightless bird which is widespread across Australia, and by height is the second largest bird in the world.  Aboriginal peoples had long hunted emus as a source of meat and feathers.  In time, the Kurnawal, a Gunnagalic-speaking people who had settled around the Gippsland Lakes in south-eastern Victoria, found it more useful to corral emus with ditches and fences until the time came to slaughter them.  From here, they sometimes fed and bred them, which in time led to fully domesticated emus [12].

Domesticated emus quickly spread far beyond the lands of the Kurnawal.  Quick-growing birds, they became a very useful source of meat, but also provided many other products, such as eggs, feathers, hides for leather and parchment, and emu oil.  As the rearing of emus becomes widespread throughout the Murray, one of the main indexes of a farmer’s wealth became how many adult emus he could maintain in his flocks [13].

With the arrival of domesticated emus, and increasing number of ducks farmed in the now-empty rangelands, the Murray peoples had a replacement for their exhausted hunting grounds.  Fishing from their wetlands remained a useful supplementary source of meat, but the primary source of meat for the Classical Gunnagal came from domesticated animals.  Combined with their development of new farming techniques, this gave them the basis for building a new civilization, with considerable advances in technology and social organisation over their predecessors.

The Interregnum was a time of considerable cultural ferment and increasing technology.  New techniques and technologies were developed in artwork, masonry, construction, metallurgy, ceramics, sundials, textiles, weaponry, and many other fields.  Yet none of these would be more significant than the development of the first true writing system.  By the Late Formative, the Gunnagal were using a variety of symbols to mark ownership and contents of some goods, particularly on ceramics.  At first, these were mostly according to personal designs and methods, and varied from a few straight lines cut into the sides of pots to elaborately-painted diagrams to represent container contents.  The disruptions and population displacements led to the breakdown of many of the trade routes and the people who used some of these symbols, and the remaining traders found that it became more practical to have a common set of symbols representing ownership, which could be presented to the Council of a city in the case of disputes.

This was the genesis of the Gunnagal writing system; a set of symbols used to assert private ownership which was standardised to assist with government resolution of legal disputes.  Yet once the first system of writing developed, it did not take governments long to adopt it much more widely.  The power of writing combined with abundant clay to make into tablets led to the rise of a literate bureaucracy who began to keep detailed records of many aspects of life in the Gunnagal cities.  The spread of bronze tools and increasing stone working also meant that public inscriptions and proclamations could be conveyed to the people.  The first surviving inscription (a fragment of a law code) which later archaeologists can decipher will be dated to 117 BC, but writing on clay had been commonplace for more than a century before that.

The Gunnagal writing system which emerged in early Classical times was shaped both by the preferred writing medium and the variety of personalised designs which preceded it.  Early Gunnagal scribes wrote mostly on clay using a stylus with a sharpened point, which meant that all their characters were formed from straight lines; early Gunnagal writing was distinctly angular.  The Gunnagal script was fundamentally a syllabary; all of the words in their language (except for a few recently borrowed words) could be represented by about four hundred characters depicting syllables [14].

Thanks to the legacy of symbolic designs, Gunnagal writing also included a number of stylised pictographs which were originally intended to represent trade goods.  These pictographs originally represented a single word, usually a name, but were soon expanded used to represent ideas as well, and often acquired multiple meanings which needed to be interpreted based on context.  The most common pictograph was a stylised representation of a tree with spreading branches, which was originally intended to depict a wattle tree, but which was soon co-opted for other purposes.  Depending on context, the wattle-sign could represent wealth, food, a good harvest, the new year [15], gold as either the colour or the metal, and several other meanings.

In time, the invention of writing allowed the consolidation of government power.  The surviving governments of the Interregnum and early Classical era were effectively continuations of the old Wisdom Cities; oligarchic councils which were mostly responsible for the rule of their own city and for a long stretch of the river outside of the city walls.  Two of the Wisdom Cities survived the Collapse, Tjibarr and Gundabingee.  Displaced migrants within the Murray had founded a third city partway between those two centres, Weenaratta, which started with a similar oligarchic government, and which grew rapidly in population during the later stages of the Interregnum.

During the Classical era, these three cities continued to be called Wisdom Cities, but their governments changed their form.  The Councils had been ruled by the elders of the eight kitjigal, and whose roles often combined aspects of noble families, lawmakers, priests, military leaders, and merchant princes.  With the chaos of the Collapse and the subsequent rebuilding, many of these functions changed or became more specialised.  The kitjigal persisted, but developed into a system of political factions with their own interests in trade and sport, and who also often functioned as an armed militia.  Their prominent families emerged as nobles with an interest in trade and in warfare, but they lost any functions as lawgivers or priests.  Priestly hierarchies emerged in each city, who took over the main religious duties, and who functioned separately from the kitjigal.

In time, the factions in each city nominated secular leaders, whose function was originally to arbitrate in disputes between the factions, but which in time evolved into monarchies.  During the Classical era, the rule of these monarchs was never absolute; the factions had their own interests and if enough of them combined in revolt, they could bring down a monarch.  Still, under the monarchs, the Wisdom Cities become the centres of expansive states, who sometimes fought with each other, and who extended their rule far beyond the bounds of the Murray.

The Formative era had seen rule largely confined to a narrow strip of land along the river, but the monarchs extended their power much further.  The monarchs at Tjibarr ruled over a kingdom which at its height stretched as far south as the Grampian ranges in Victoria, and as far west as the old lands around Murray Bridge, where they re-opened the copper mines.  The monarchs of Gundabingee had a similarly growing realm, expanding their power eastward into the highlands.

Besides the three cities along the Murray, a fourth city was founded by migrants who left the Murray proper and moved along the Murrumbidgee, one of its major tributaries.  Here, just upstream of an area of large natural wetlands, they founded a new town which they called Garrkimang [Narrandera, NSW].  Garrkimang never knew the rule of a Council; it had been founded by migrants following a man who claimed to have visions, and his heirs became a line of prophet-kings who ruled according to their claim to be best at interpreting the wisdom of eternity.  Under their direction, the natural wetlands downriver were expanded and controlled as a source of food, while the rich lands upriver were turned into productive farmland.  In time, Garrkimang would grow to become the wealthiest and most populous of all the Wisdom Cities, first as a monarchy, and then in time as the capital of an empire.

Classical Gunnagal civilization centred on the four great cities, but it fit into a much larger network of trade and transportation which sprawled across much of the continent.  Some of this was evident even in the changed methods of construction within the great cities.  With bronze tools for quarrying and masonry, the Classical Era saw many buildings constructed out of stone.  Most notably, the developing priestly and royal classes saw the construction of large palaces and temples, where the earlier Gunnagal had been much more egalitarian in their dwellings.

From these palaces and temples, the developing bureaucratic classes administered life in the great cities.  They did not control everything; the faction-riven society of the Gunnagal did not lend itself to tight government control.  Still, the bureaucrats kept records of contracts and censuses.  Warehouses under the control of the temples and palaces stored bulk goods, particularly wattle seeds, yams, and other yields of the harvests.  The monarchs and their representatives did what they could to ensure impartial government decisions.  Especially when it came to anything involving trade.

Trade, more than anything else, ensured the prosperity of the Classical Gunnagal civilization.  Much of the trade was local, carried by boats along the rivers.  The greatest bulk came from food, including staples such as yams and wattleseeds, and delicacies such as meat and fruit.  Other local trade goods included timber, textiles, tools, wattle gum, locally grown spices such as sea celery, river mint and pepperbush, ochres used as mineral dyes, and a variety of vegetable dyes formed from wattle pods, wattle flowers, and the roots of other native plants.  Even more valuable were the locally grown drugs; ganyu and other alcoholic beverages were always well-received.  While the Gunnagal did not use much irrigation for crops, they did ensure that their cultivated corkwood grew well enough to provide them with kunduri to trade far across the continent.

Indeed, the Gunnagal trade networks reached much further than the environs of the Murray.  Some goods could be moved by water along the erratic River Darling, and others were so valuable that they were carried overland for long distances.  From several coastal areas came a blue-purple dye made from the shell of a sea snail, which preserved its colour long after vegetable dyes had faded [16].  Silver and tin were brought down from Inverell and mined in other smaller deposits.  Copper came from both the Upper and Lower Murray.  Gold was rarely found, but small alluvial deposits were exploited around Bathurst.  Gemstones were highly regarded when they could be found; opals from the deserts, sapphires from Inverell, and diamonds from a dozen small deposits in the east.  Salt, that valuable preservative, was harvested from inland dry salt lakes or from evaporation ponds in settlements along the Spencer Gulf.  The same inland salt lakes supplied treasured alabaster gypsum which was used to make ornamental statues and other stonework.  Dried fruits from the southern and eastern coasts were valued delicacies in a civilization with only limited sweet foods of their own.  Likewise, a few highly-prized spices grew only on the eastern and southern coasts, where the rainfall was high enough to support them; lemon myrtle, aniseed myrtle, cinnamon myrtle, mintbushes, native ginger, and several other spices were carried by people across the mountains to inland trading posts [17].

While trade flowed from and to each of the four great cities, each had its own areas of specialty.  Tjibarr, furthest down the Murray, was the main source of the copper, silver, lead, and tin which came from the Lower Murray or shipped down the Darling.  Garrkimang, from its position along the Murrumbidgee, was the major supplier for the kunduri trade, and it also had good access to the eastern spices.  Gundabingee, in the upper reaches of the Murray, supplied premium-quality timber from the highlands, and with its relatively abundant rainfall grew most of the locally-produced spices.  Weenaratta, in the middle of the Murray, had access to the greatest wetlands, exported fish and other meats, and used its central position to take a cut of all trade which went up and downriver.

From their four great cities, the Classical Gunnagal flourished in ways which surpassed even their pre-Collapse ancestors.  About 100 BC, the centuries-long drought came to an end.  The return to normal long-term rainfall levels allowed them to recolonise most of the Lower Murray areas abandoned in the great drought.  More extensive use of bronze tools for farming and land clearing, and for building better boats to transport food by river, combined with the new agricultural techniques and domesticated animals, allowed their population to boom.  By 100 AD, the Gunnagal-speaking peoples now matched their pre-Collapse levels.  By 350 AD, the population of the four kingdoms had passed two million people, mostly clustered along the Murray and its major tributaries, but with some subject peoples living further away.  The peoples of this era would never have thought of themselves as a single group; by this time, the dialects of Gunnagal had diverged beyond the point of mutual intelligibility, even for the peoples along the Murray [18].  Yet they shared a common heritage, and common bonds along the great river which they still called the Water Mother.

And, in time, common problems.

--

[1] Being legumes, the roots of wattles contain symbiotic bacteria which replenish nitrates in the soil.

[2] Wattles can be broadly divided into early-flowering wattles, whose seeds are harvested around November-December, and late-flowering wattles, whose seeds are harvested around January-February.  The advantage of harvesting two species of wattles is that the harvesting can be spread over more of the year, while still allowing time to harvest yams and murnongs (in April-May).  Some of the other farming work, such as pruning wattles, harvesting gum, and so forth, can be spread over the quieter farming months.  This allows for an ever higher yield of food per worker than in the previous form of Gunnagal farming, which in turn supports a greater proportion of the population as city-dwellers.

[3] This also means that when the drought ends, the sustainable population will increase as agricultural yields recover.

[4] The desert lime (Citrus glauca) is related to domesticated citrus species such as oranges and limes.  It is native to the more arid areas of Australia, and quite tolerant of harsh conditions such as heat, cold and drought.  In modern Australia, it is harvested both from the wild and from commercial plantations, and it is also used to hybridise with other domesticated citrus species.  Fruit from wild trees is sweet but quite small; domesticated desert limes in *Australia are somewhat larger, although still not comparable to most other domesticated citrus species.

[5] A similar beverage exists today; in parts of Jamaica, “yam wine” is grown from a mixture of yams, citrus, and spices.

[6] The sweet quandong or desert peach (Santalum acuminatum) is a member of the sandalwood family, and a fairly close relative of Indian sandalwood.  After macadamia nuts, it is the most widely-cultivated Australian native plant, with a reasonably large commercial harvest.  It is a hemi-parasitic plant whose roots derive parts of its nutrition from the roots of other trees.  The Gunnagal will grow domesticated quandongs alongside rows of wattles for this purpose (as is done in commercial harvesting today).

[7] Hunter-gatherer Aboriginal peoples often ate only the nuts of wild quandong, rather than the fruit itself.  This is because the nut was much easier to find and gather.  They did not collect the nut directly, but relied on emus instead.  Those birds ate the fruit, and the nut passed unharmed through their digestive tract.  Aboriginal peoples simply gathered quandong nuts from emu droppings.  (I am not making this up.)

[8] Corkwood is relatively easy to cultivate, being a plant tolerant of limited rainfall and poor soils.  Some species of corkwood are grown commercially today as a source of various alkaloids which are used in making pharmaceuticals.  The drug produced from corkwood was historically called pituri, but is called kunduri in allohistorical Australia.

[9] Sallow wattle/ Sydney golden wattle/ coastal wattle (Acacia longifolia) and gossamer wattle/ white sallow wattle (A. floribunda) differ in some of their details from other domesticated wattles, but their main uses are similar.  Muntries (Kunzea pomifera) and apple berry (Billardiera scandens) are both fruits which will be valued along the coastline, and when dried, used as a trade good inland.  Warrigal greens/ Australian spinach (Tetragonia tetragonoides) will become a useful leaf vegetable.

[10] As a relatively small animal, the tiger quoll is much easier to domesticate than some larger Australian animals such as wombats or koalas.  It has been kept as a pet, and it breeds easily in captivity.

[11] Although unlike cats, domesticated quolls do not get stuck up trees.  They climb down on their own.

[12] Monsieur Diamond notwithstanding, emus can be easily kept and bred in captivity, and are increasingly being farmed both in Australia and around the world.  They would require more work to tame and feed than the other main Gunnagal domesticated food animal, the wood duck.  Wood ducks are primarily grazers, while emus need a more varied diet.  Domesticated emus are partly left to feed on grass and other plants, and some insects which they catch for themselves in the fields, but they also need to be partly grain-fed, for which *Aboriginal farmers use wattle seeds.  Farmed emus can also be run through wattle fields once the main harvest has taken place.  This keeps the emus exercised, and also lets them clean up any stray seeds, discarded seed pods (which emus also eat), and any other insects pests which may be in the fields.

[13] Emu broods are fairly large, often up to 15 chicks for every breeding female, but most of these birds will be slaughtered at around 12-15 months old for their meat and other products.  The index of a farmer’s wealth is thus the number of long-term adult birds which they can maintain, not the total size of the flock (which will often include many chicks).

[14] The Gunnagal are fortunate in their syllabary, in that their language is structured in such a way that about four hundred syllables will represent their entire language.  (An English syllabary would run into thousands of symbols, since English has lots of consonant clusters and lots of vowels).  Most syllables in spoken Gunnagal (at least the Tjibarr dialect) consist of a consonant or consonant cluster followed by a vowel, such as ki, be or tji.  Only a relatively few syllables have a consonant-vowel-consonant arrangement, such as the relatively common gal.

[15] The association with the new year is because the Gunnagal date their year from late winter/early spring, around the time of the flowering of the first wattles.

[16] This dye is made from the shell of the large rock shell (Thais orbita), a predatory sea snail which is common around much of the Australian coast.  It is a relative of the Mediterranean sea snails which produced dyes of Tyrian purple and royal blue which were such valued commodities in classical times.

[17] Aboriginal peoples used a wide variety of plants to flavour their food.  Some of these have been adopted for small-scale commercial cultivation or wild harvesting in modern Australia.  In an allohistorical Australia where farming has been widespread, many of these plants are going to be similarly cultivated as spices.  Lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) is a tree whose leaves produce a sweet, strong lemony flavour; in modern Australia it is the most widely-cultivated native spice.  The related species of aniseed myrtle (Syzygium anisatum) and cinnamon myrtle (Backhousia myrtifolia) have similar properties, and all of these will be cultivated by farmers on the eastern seaboard.  Native thyme / roundleaf mintbush (Prostanthera rotundifolia) and the related cut-leaf mintbush (P. incisa) are members of the same plant family as more common culinary herbs such as culinary herbs such as mint, oregano, sage and thyme, and will similarly be used as flavouring.  Native ginger (Alpinia caerulea) was used by Aboriginal peoples when roasting food in earth ovens, and gives a strong gingery flavour to cooked food.  Lemon-scented teatree (Leptospermum petersonii and L. liversidgei) will also be cultivated for their lemony-scented leaves, which will be used to make an Australian equivalent of tea (as it is sometimes used today).  L. petersonii is grown commercially in both Australia and overseas so that its essential oil can be extracted from its leaves.  Lemon-scented grass (Cymbopogon ambiguus) is an Australian relative of common lemon grass (C. citratus).  Drought-tolerant and easily cultivated as a herb for cooking or for tea, lemon-scented grass is one eastern spice which will spread west across the Great Dividing Range.

[18] By way of comparison, the difference between the Tjibarr [Swan Hill] and Gundabingee languages is about the same as the difference between modern Dutch and Austrian German.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #8: Of Birds, Bats and Bugs

When Europeans arrived in Australia, they found a continent without any epidemic diseases to greet them.  Eurasian diseases like smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, typhus, chickenpox and a cocktail of other killers devastated the indigenous peoples of Australia, but no epidemic diseases waited in the Great Southern Land for foreign visitors.

In allohistorical Australia, this is not the case.

--

Australia, as a continent, has long been isolated from the rest of the world.  Some of the neighbouring islands to the north are part of the same continental landmass, and were connected to each other when sea levels lowered during the ice ages [1], but it has always been a separate landmass to the mainland of Asia.  Ocean barriers have protected it, but that isolation has never been complete.  Over the millennia, many plants and animals have crossed the seas from the north and established themselves on the Australian mainland; birds, bats, rats, monitor lizards, and humans, among many others.  Still, with the separation of salt water, indigenous Australian civilization developed in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world.

Almost.

Direct human contact between Australia and its northern neighbours is rare; some sporadic visits have occurred in the north-west or across the waters of Torres Strait, but their main legacy has been the transportation of the dingo to Australia’s shores.  Yet some animals do make the crossing, particularly migratory birds.  Several plant species are thought to have been established in Australia when carried across by migrating birds.  Sometimes, birds bring less welcome influences with them.  Such as their diseases.

Early Australian agricultural peoples kept some birds of their own.  The most important of these were the domesticated birds used for meat, ducks and emus.  These birds often lived in close contact with humans, especially ducks.  Some birds were also kept as pets, such as several varieties of parrots.  Where there was such close contact between humans and birds, avian diseases could easily spread.

Avian influenza is a species of virus which has numerous subtypes, like most viruses, but which is primarily adapted to infect birds.  Infections of avian influenza are often unnoticed among their main carrier bird species; infected birds often show no symptoms, even when they can infect other birds.  Strains of avian influenza can jump between bird species to new hosts, and in the new host species, these strains are often more infectious and much more deadly.  Avian influenza is endemic amongst many water birds, and has long been spread to Australia from migratory birds crossing to and from Asia.

Gunnagal farmers along the Murray lived in close contact with domesticated ducks, and also lived near to human-shaped wetlands populated by an abundance of wild water birds.  Strains of avian influenza regularly afflicted domesticated ducks, sometimes causing substantial die-offs to farmers’ flocks.  In time, the domesticated ducks would develop resistance, sometimes becoming asymptomatic carriers themselves, and thus be largely unaffected until a new strain evolved.

In 349 AD, a particularly harsh strain of avian influenza spread from wild swans in Lake Alexandrina at the mouth of the Murray to domesticated ducks raised by nearby farming peoples.  As had happened with many previous strains of avian influenza, the disease killed up to a third of the domesticated ducks in the region, and spread up the Murray.  In 350 AD it reached Tjibarr, devastating duck populations and farmers’ livelihoods.  In 351 AD the strain reached Gundabingee, where it also struck farmers’ flocks.  Most epidemics of avian influenza burned out here; farming communities beyond the Murray were too scattered to allow for easy spread of the virus.  But the strain in 351 AD was different; unlike previous epidemics, this one mutated into a form which spread easily between humans.

This strain of influenza was the first epidemic disease which Australia had experienced.  Some endemic waterborne diseases were spread by poor hygiene, and a few endemic but rarely fatal diseases were transmitted by mosquitoes.  But the influenza epidemic was like nothing which had been seen before on the island continent.  Like all flu epidemics, this one spread mostly by airborne transmission, particularly through victims coughing and sneezing.  In a population with no previous exposure to epidemic diseases, its symptoms were swift, severe, and often fatal.  The first visible sign was usually a blue tint to the lips, combined with a sudden sense of weariness, which led the afflicted Gunnagal to christen the disease “blue-sleep.”

Blue-sleep struck quickly; it sometimes took only a matter of hours for newly-infected victims to be too fatigued to move themselves.  The most severe symptoms affected the lungs; the virus attacked the lung lining, usually causing haemorrhaging until the victims coughed up blood and died from pneumonia when their lungs filled with fluid.  Blue-sleep also affected other parts of the body; it often infected the intestines, which sometimes caused its victims to die from blood and fluid loss.  Victims who survived the initial assault of the virus were weakened for days or weeks; secondary pneumonia often spread from opportunistic bacteria, and victims who had no-one to care for them often died of dehydration or even malnutrition.

Blue-sleep spread throughout the farming peoples of south-eastern Australia, killing up to ten percent of the population in the worst-affected areas.  It spread to the nearer hunter-gatherer peoples as well, but those communities were more fortunate since the virus affected people so quickly that it often prevented them from travelling to spread it further.  Blue-sleep killed about five percent of the agricultural population of the south-east, and a smaller percentage of the hunter-gatherer peoples who lived nearby.  The Yuduwungu people of south-western Australia were fortunate to be spared; the desert of the Nullarbor was too thinly-populated to spread the virus.

After its initial ravages, blue-sleep became an endemic disease in south-eastern Australia.  It lost the worst aspects of its virulence, and in evolved into a disease whose symptoms were largely similar to strains of flu seen elsewhere in the world, although it retained the distinctive blue tinge to the lips, and the early onset of fatigue.  Like all flu viruses, it mutated rapidly, and new strains appeared every few years.  Occasional major epidemics occurred when blue-sleep evolved into a form where people had no resistance.  Australian peoples would never be truly rid of the blue-sleep virus.

When Europeans contact Australia, they will quickly recognise blue-sleep as a form of influenza.  Its symptoms are more severe than ones which they are familiar with, but they will still know what to call the illness.  And they will die from it.

--

Creating artificial wetlands is one of the hallmarks of early Australian civilization.  Wetlands supply them with value sources of fish and meat and feathers from birds.  In the wetlands, people gather plants for food, fibre and dyes, and cultivate some herbs and spices which cannot tolerate drier climes.  The wetlands even help to filter the water of the Murray and other major rivers.  Human waste and other pollutants which are dumped into the waterways are carried into artificial wetlands downstream, which cleanse the water of many of the contaminants.

Yet artificial wetlands are a mixed blessing.  Swamps, ponds and marshes are excellent for harbouring fish and birds, but they also offer an ideal environment for biting insects and a host of waterborne parasites.  The waters of Australian wetlands harbour a variety of pathogens such as giardia, cryptosporidium and parasitic worms which often infest human hosts.  These parasites are widespread throughout the Murray basin and other areas with artificial wetlands.  Fortunately for their human hosts, the illnesses caused by these parasites are debilitating but rarely fatal.

Wetlands also harbour myriads of mosquitoes.  Mosquitoes transmit many of the deadliest diseases in human history, particularly malaria, which is thought to have caused more human deaths than any other single cause.  Luckily for Australian civilization, the worst mosquito-borne diseases were either confined to the tropical north, or never became established in Australia [2].  They will also be helped by a side-effect of their wetland management practices.  Several species of Australian sundews produce edible tubers which are valued as a food source, and so the Gunnagal cultivate sundews.  Since sundews are carnivorous plants which trap flying insects in sticky leaves, this helps to limit the number of mosquitoes in the artificial wetlands.

Nonetheless, there will enough mosquitoes in the wetlands to transmit diseases, and Australia harbours several pathogens which are easily spread by mosquitoes.  Ross River fever (also called epidemic polyarthritis) is a virus which produces a variety of flu-like symptoms such as fevers, chills, headaches, fatigue, and sometimes stiff or swollen joints.  Most victims recover within a few days, although about ten percent experience a chronic form of the illness which produces ongoing joint pains, depression and fatigue which persists for months or years.  It is fortunately a non-fatal infection, but it will become established in the wetlands surrounding Gunnagal cities.  While it will not kill visiting Europeans, many of them will be struck down by what they see as a mysterious malady.  The Gunnagal will have a long familiarity with the disease, which they will call “old man’s curse,” from the arthritis-like symptoms which it produces even in the young.

The disease which another history will call Murray Valley encephalitis (MVE) is another virus that is transmitted by mosquitoes.  Despite its name, it is historically more common in the tropical north than the Murray basin, but it can become established further south.  The wild host of MVE are herons, cormorants and related birds, which are common throughout the Gunnagal wetlands.  MVE will become endemic throughout the Murray.  Fortunately, most of its victims experience no symptoms more severe than occasional nausea, headaches or vomiting.  A small proportion - less than one percent - go on to develop encephalitis (brain inflammation), with symptoms such as drowsiness, fits, weariness, and fatigue.  Of those so afflicted, a quarter will die and up to half of the rest will experience permanent effects such as paralysis or brain damage.

Still, of all the gifts which Australian mosquitoes give to humans, the one which will kill the most people is the one which initially was the least dangerous.  Barmah Forest virus is related to the Ross River virus, and often has symptoms so similar that it requires a blood test to tell them apart, although Barmah Forest virus is usually less severe.  Hosted by a variety of wild birds, it quickly became established in the Gunnagal wetlands, where for centuries it was a minor malady.  Like the other mosquito-borne viruses, Barmah Forest virus was originally transmitted mostly between animals, where humans were simply incidental infections.  Over time, however, the virus evolved into a strain where humans were amongst its preferred hosts.  When it did, the results were deadly.

A virulent strain of Barmah Forest virus appeared along the central Murray basin during the sixth century AD.  Victims who were infected by this strain first suffered from chills, then fever and a blistery rash which spread across most of their body.  The distinctiveness of the rash, and the realisation that the illness was suffered by people who had been near wetlands, led the Gunnagal to christen the illness “swamp rash.”  The initial rash would be followed by fatigue and swollen joints.  Many victims recovered at that point.  A minority entered the toxic stage of the infection, where the lymphatic system was infected, leading to severely swollen lymph nodes over most of the body, extreme pain, and eventual coma and death.

Swamp rash became endemic to the Gunnagal wetlands, although it did not spread far beyond the Murray basin.  The virus is well-adapted to infecting humans, although there are also animal reservoirs amongst several kinds of wild water birds, and sometimes domesticated ducks.  Birds rarely die from swamp rash, but humans are not so fortunate.  When swamp rash first became virulent, the death rate amongst unexposed adults was around ten percent, and up to double that rate for infected children.  Centuries of infection from swamp rash has meant that the Gunnagal who live near wetlands have evolved some natural resistance; the death rate amongst infected children is about five percent, and less for adults.  For Eurasians, who lack such resistance, the death rate will continue to be around ten percent for adults and worse for children.  The higher death rates are not limited to people of Eurasian descent; since swamp rash did not evolve into its virulent form until after the Great Migrations, people who come from other parts of Australia are as badly-affected as Eurasians.

--

While the Australian continent holds relatively few infectious diseases which can be transmitted to humans, there are some potential killers.  Of those which do exist, some of the most deadly are carried by bats.  Australian bats harbour several endemic diseases which are potentially fatal to humans.  As long as Aboriginal peoples remained hunter-gatherers, their population densities were too low for any of these diseases to turn into epidemics.  With farming practices transforming the landscape, bat populations were increasingly disturbed, and came into more contact with humans.  This sometimes meant that their diseases infected humans, too; viruses such as Australian bat lyssavirus, Hendra virus, and Menangle virus sometimes spread to the human population [3].  With the larger human populations, particularly the larger urban populations, this now meant that bat diseases could turn into epidemic human diseases.

Still, many of these bat-carried diseases are not easily transmissible between humans.  Initial exposure was usually either from a bat bite, or farmers accidentally coming into contact with bat urine or other bodily fluids.  In many cases, this result in the death of the person infected, but rarely infection of other humans.

The first bat-borne disease to become endemic in allohistorical Australian civilization was Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV).  A close relative of rabies, this virus produces similar symptoms.  The infection spreads slowly along the nervous system until it reaches the brain.  Once there, symptoms begin with headaches and fever, and progress to severe pain, violent fits and spasms, extreme weakness, and mental instability.  Eventually, the victim dies from inability to breathe properly.

A few early Gunnagal farmers died from direct infection of ABLV caused by bat bites.  However, the disease only became endemic when domesticated dingos were infected by ABLV.  In dingos, ABLV produced similar effects to rabies; aggressive behaviour including biting, which often transmits the virus to other dogs or to humans.  Aboriginal peoples did not know that ABLV originally came from bats, but they quickly learned to recognise the behaviour of “mad dingos” that could lead to a fatal bite.  The Atjuntja of south-western Australia had a name for the illness, drun-nju, which literally translated as “barking mad.”  The Dutch who first encountered the disease there would transliterate the Atjuntja name into Drongo disease, the name by which it would be known to the world.

Still, while Drongo disease was almost universally fatal for people infected, it was almost impossible to transmit directly between humans.  This meant that it never became a major epidemic disease.

Unfortunately, another Australian bat-borne virus is both often fatal and capable of easy transmission between people.

--

History does not record exactly where the disease that came to be called Marnitja was first transmitted from bats to humans.  Written sources do, however, describe the first time it appeared in one of the major urban centres along the Murray.  The city of Garrkimang, the former imperial capital, still possessed a fastidious and methodical bureaucracy who recorded all important events that affected the city.  No event since the deposition of the last emperor would make a more lasting impression on their city than the arrival of a disease which they called the Waiting Death.

The archives of Garrkimang record that Marnitja first struck the city in 1206.  A myriad of clay tablets describe with painful precision the course of the disease.  Victims first experienced an initial fever, chills and weariness.  These symptoms were reminiscent of the other epidemic disease, blue-sleep, although they lacked the hallmark blue lips of that sickness.  However, Marnitja progressed to much more striking symptoms.  Victims started to cough and splutter up a pinkish-red, frothy fluid mixed with saliva.  Although the archivists in Garrkimang did not know and thus not could record it, the pink fluid was a result of haemorrhaging of the lungs.

The more fortunate victims of Marnitja started to recover from the “pink cough” after a couple of days, although fatigue and milder coughs would continue for another fortnight.  The less fortunate victims did not recover, but suffered worsening coughs and increasing weariness.  Some of the victims died through difficulty breathing, others from blood and fluid loss caused by excessive coughing.  Other victims died of renal failure, or simply slipped into a coma from which they never awoke.  Survivors of the pink cough sometimes suffered permanent damage to their lungs, which produced life-long breathing difficulties.

Pink cough, the first stage of Marnitja, was devastating enough in itself, but what followed was worse.  Victims who had recovered from the early stages of the pink cough, or rare survivals from the later stages, were not completely free of the disease.  Many of the survivors started to suffer from strange new symptoms about two months later: headaches, a fresh bout of fever, confusion, seizures, and eventually delirium.  Every victim who showed these new symptoms would die from them; a few succumbed to the fever or killed themselves by mischance from the seizures, while most eventually slipped into a coma from which they never recovered.  The excruciating period of uncertainty for survivors of the pink cough, waiting to know whether they would suffer the fatal second stage, led the people of Garrkimang to christen the new disease the Waiting Death (Marnitja).

Marnitja spread far beyond its first outbreak in Garrkimang.  The archives of the imperial city and the other major Murray cities do not record precise numbers, but it appears that about a third of the population were infected by the disease.  Of those infected, about half died from the first or second stage.  Marnitja slowly burned its way across the continent, and in time touched even the hunter-gatherer peoples on the farthest northern shores.  The first epidemic killed perhaps fifteen percent of the Australian population.  Nor would the disease disappear easily.  A small percentage (0.2-0.5%) of those who came into contact with the virus became asymptomatic carriers, who would never suffer the symptoms of Marnitja but who remained infectious throughout their lives.  So, like blue-sleep before it, Marnitja became established as an epidemic disease.  It struck again every generation or two, although subsequent generations started to develop some resistance to the Waiting Death.

--

Australia thus has two epidemic diseases waiting for any contact with overseas peoples: blue-sleep and Marnitja [4].  These diseases first spread to New Zealand after 1310 when the Maori made first contact.  They caused considerable death amongst the Maori, but in time the Maori developed a similar level of resistance to these diseases as the Aboriginal peoples.

By 1618, blue-sleep is endemic across Australasia.  Within that region, it mutates every few years, as flu viruses usually do, although these new strains are rarely fatal to people who have survived the previous variants.  Blue-sleep sometimes mixes with other strains of influenza from wild birds to create particularly severe epidemics, although even then the mortality rate is usually less than 0.5% of those infected.  (Amongst Aboriginal peoples, at least.)

As a disease, blue-sleep has become a variant of influenza with a couple of distinctive symptoms.  The blueness of the lips remains a persistent and recognisable symptom, and in lighter-skinned peoples will show up as a bluish tint to the entire face.  Blue-sleep has an incubation of 2-3 days before the first symptoms appear, although victims remain infectious for up to two weeks while recovering from the illness. European and Asian visitors will recognise it as a form of influenza, but it is a strain of flu virus to which non-Australian peoples will have no immunity.  The death toll when it is spread to the rest of the world will be as bad or worse than the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; somewhere between 2.5 to 5% of the global population will die when blue-sleep spreads around the world.

While Europeans will have some familiarity with blue-sleep, they will be completely unprepared for Australia’s biggest killer, the Waiting Death.  Marnitja is a henipavirus related to Hendra virus and Nipah virus, and more distantly to measles and mumps.  Its original animal hosts were flying foxes (fruit bats), which became agricultural pests that raided Gunnagal fruit orchards.  The virus was not transmitted directly to humans, but first infected dingos which came into contact with bat droppings and bodily fluids left beneath fruit trees.  Infected animals spread the virus to other dingos, and eventually to humans, where it became an epidemic disease [5].

Marnitja spreads through airborne transmission or in bodily fluids.  The virus has an incubation period of 7-14 days.  Infected people are contagious for most of that time, although more so later in the incubation period.  The haemorrhagic (pink cough) stage of the disease can last for up to two weeks, although some victims die within two days of the first signs of the pink cough.  Infected people are contagious throughout the haemorrhagic stage, although not once the pink cough has subsided.  After the haemorrhagic stage, the majority of the survivors are free of the virus (and have lifelong immunity), but a minority will develop a form of encephalitis over the next two or three months, or sometimes a longer period (up to 3 years).  If the virus reaches the encephalitic stage, then it is almost (99.5%) universally fatal.

The Marnitja virus is capable of producing deadly pandemics.  Even after several centuries of afflicting Aboriginal peoples, who have evolved some resistance, fresh epidemics still kill 3 to 5% of the non-immune population.  Elsewhere in the world, virgin-soil epidemics will have considerably higher mortality rates.  Depending on their overall level of health (well-fed peoples are more likely to survive), Marnitja will kill anywhere from 10-15% of the population of a given region.  Transmission of the disease beyond Australia’s shores may take some time; sea travel in the seventeenth century was often slow.  Still, sooner or later, the rest of the world will discover the affliction of the Waiting Death...

--

[1] Or, for the pedantic, during the glacial periods of the ice age.  Strictly speaking, the world is still in an ice age, just during an interglacial period.

[2] Malaria existed in northern Australia (until recently eradicated).  Dengue fever is also present in northern Australia, but does not spread very far south.  Yellow fever, the other major mosquito-borne disease, has never become established in Australia.

[3] This is a process which is happening in modern Australia, although several of the bat viruses have only recently been recognised.  Australian bats harbour a number of diseases which are capable of infecting and sometimes killing humans.  These include: Australian bat lyssavirus, a close relative of rabies which produces similar symptoms; Hendra virus, which can cause respiratory haemorrhaging and fluid build-up in the lungs, and which sometimes infects the brain causing a form of encephalitis; and Menangle virus, which produces severe flu-like symptoms.

[4] One of the side-effects of having epidemic diseases like blue-sleep and Marnitja (and the other less fatal mosquito-borne diseases) is that Aboriginal peoples will have developed generally stronger immune systems.  There is evidence that exposure to some infectious diseases during childhood produces a stronger immune system which offers somewhat more protection against all diseases.  (See the work of James V. Neel, for instance.)  Virgin soil epidemics will still be devastating to Aboriginal peoples, but not quite as deadly as the equivalent epidemics which ravaged the Americas.

[5] Marnitja is an allohistorical virus, but based on an extrapolation of what the real-world Hendra virus might do if it evolves into a form which can be easily transmitted between humans.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #9: The First Speakers

The time of the Collapse was one of great panic and greater upheaval.  Harvests failed, droughts persisted for years and stretched into decades, bushfires grew more frequent and spanned ever greater areas of the continent, and the arts of civilization seemed to failing.  In this time of chaos, people sought refuge in whatever consolation they could find.

In 842 BC, Robinvale, one of the old Wisdom Cities, was a place ripe for new ideas.  Uprising and subsequent collapse had destroyed the great city of Murray Bridge, further downriver.  In turn, this had ruined the arsenical bronze trade which supplied most of Robinvale’s wealth.  The seemingly endless drought had destroyed much of its agricultural hinterland.  More than half of its former territory had already been abandoned, wattles and yams left to run wild while wetlands silted up and returned to semi-desert.  Nomadic hunter-gatherers reoccupied the former farmlands, while the surviving farmers gathered in Robinvale itself, growing increasingly unruly.

Wunirugal son of Butjinong was one such farmer among thousands who arrived in Robinvale in that year.  The exact location of his old farm is not known; at least two dozen sites would later be claimed to be the site of his birthplace.  He is reliably known to have been a member of the Azure kitjigal, and he claimed the wedge-tailed eagle as his personal totem.  Beyond that, nothing definite is known about his life before he arrived in Robinvale in the summer of 842 BC, although a thousand tales have since sprung up to explain how he spent his early years.

Just as with his early life, what Wunirugal accomplished in Robinvale in that year has been recorded in many contradictory versions.  Certainly, Wunirugal was among the more vocal of the farmers complaining about the lack of food, to the point where the city militia took official notice of him.  Some say that he spoke so eloquently that the militia agreed to escort him before the Council to plead his case.  Some say that Wunirugal outran the militia and entered the Council hall on his own.  Some say that he was struck immobile by a vision and was carried bodily into the Council hall for investigation.  One account claims that the Council came out to meet him in the main square of Robinvale, but that version is usually discounted.

No two versions of Wunirugal’s meeting with the Robinvale Council agree on what he said, or even on the names of the members of the Council.  There is surprising unanimity about the Council’s decision: Wunirugal was deemed a danger to public order, ordered to be expelled from Robinvale immediately, and not to return for a year and a day, on pain of death.  Wunirugal left, but he was not silent along the way.  Again, the accounts of his words vary, but all sources agree that he persuaded at least three hundred people to come with him into exile.

Wunirugal led his new followers far from Robinvale.  Accounts of their journey include some fantastic events.  The most nearly-universal of those events is an account of how soon after he left the city, Wunirugal received another vision.  While having this vision, he was struck by lightning which came from clouds which produced no rain, yet he survived with no ill effects.  Scholars will long argue whether this widely-reported event is factual.  It might be; some lightning strikes from thunderclouds where rain is falling but evaporates before it reaches the ground, and some people do survive lightning strikes.  Certainly, the reports of what Wunirugal did after the lightning strike are in surprising agreement.  He is said to have fallen to his knees and said: “Help me, help me.  Tell me what I should do, O lightning blue?”

Whatever the merits of this account, it is clear from the many tales of Wunirugal that he had visions, or what other people believed to be visions.  He drew on these for guidance, and led his followers up the Murrumbidgee.  This river is one of the major tributaries of the Murray, but it had been a relative backwater since most of the trade flowed up and down the main river.  Wunirugal led his followers past a long series of natural wetlands, and reached an area of lush, fertile soils which flourished even in the drought.  He declared that this would be the perfect place to build a town.  According to most (but not all) accounts, he said, “Here, the earth will always grow.  Here, we can build a city which will have no rival.”

He called the new city Garrkimang.

--

Garrkimang [Narrandera, New South Wales] grew to become one of the four great cities of the Classical Gunnagal.  Like their contemporaries, the people of Garrkimang could trace their ancestry back to their Formative forefathers.  However, Garrkimang developed along a different path from its neighbours.  In language, it was much more distinct than any of the other Classical cities.  The migrants who founded Garrkimang were a combination of refugees from the former Murray Bridge and the most westerly areas of former Robinvale territory.  This meant that their speech had diverged much further; while there were clear underlying similarities with other Gunnagalic languages, learning the speech of Garrkimang was considerably more difficult for foreigners than that of any other Classical city.

In culture and religion, Garrkimang was also unlike any other Classical city.  The inhabitants called themselves the Biral, a name which means roughly “chosen ones.”  They traced this back to the migration under Wunirugal, believing that they had been chosen to be granted their new land as a sacred trust.  Their religion had a similar foundation to the older Gunnagal beliefs; they still shared the same general view of the Evertime and of the spirit-beings who inhabit eternity, although they gave different names and attributes to many of those beings.  Yet the old beliefs had been overlaid by a new religious structure, that of the First Speakers and their representatives who interpreted the world.

The heirs of Wunirugal ruled Garrkimang as absolute monarchs.  The old cities had been ruled by oligarchic councils, but there had never been such an institution in Garrkimang.  The rulers claimed the title of First Speaker, and based their rule on religious authority.  They asserted that they were entitled to rule because they possessed the talent of interpreting the wisdom of eternity.  They proclaimed their rule through a series of law codes first promulgated in Garrkimang itself, and which were spread throughout every city and town which came under their rule.  They also adopted a set of protocols in terms of conduct, dress, and ceremonies to support the view of the First Speaker as the greatest moral authority.  This was most obviously shown in the privilege which gave the First Speaker his title: in any meeting or ceremony, the First Speaker always was the first person to speak.  Anyone who dared to speak to the First Speaker unless directly addressed first would be fortunate if they were simply exiled; death was a common punishment for such a social faux pas.

The First Speakers were not always direct heirs of Wunirugal; the succession was open to all males in the royal family.  It was even possible, although difficult, for those not of direct royal descent to be accepted into the House of the Eagle; adoption was an accepted method for particularly eminent people to join the royal family and become eligible for the throne.  The succession was often decided by the will of the First Speaker, who would designate an heir from amongst his relatives.  On some occasions, the royal princes would meet to acclaim an heir when the succession was unclear.  Public disputes over the succession were rare, and civil wars over succession would be unknown until the declining days of the monarchy.  Incompetent rulers could, however, be removed.  If the royal family thought that a First Speaker was very bad at listening to the wisdom of eternity, then that First Speaker would be quietly offered an opportunity to commune with eternity more directly, and another member of the royal family would take the throne.

Despite some internecine intrigues in the House of the Eagle, Garrkimang’s monarchs were always much more secure on their thrones than the rulers of any other Classical city.  The royal family had the bastion of religious authority to support their rule.  More than that, the old kitjigal system had broken down during the time of the Great Migrations.  With so many people displaced, two of the eight kitjigal were lost entirely, and the rest were abandoned as social institutions.  In the other Classical cities, the kitjigal evolved into armed factions which preserved their own privileges, including the right to form social militia.  Monarchs in Tjibarr, Weenaratta and Gundabingee always feared uprisings amongst the factions, but Garrkimang did not have this threat.

Some aspects of the kitjigal were still preserved in Garrkimang, but in much-changed form.  From its founding, Garrkimang’s armies were traditionally divided into six warrior societies, each of which had their own initiation rites, values, informal social hierarchies, and special duties.  These societies were named the Kangaroos, the Corellas, the Ravens, the Kookaburras, the Echidnas, and the Possums.  Each of these societies derived their names and some of their values and practices from the old colours and social codes of the kitjigal [1].  Garrkimang also had six trading associations, each of which emerged from the old kitjigal colours.  These formed into a system of recognised partnership and profit-sharing, and were in effect early corporations which had collective ownership of farming land, mines, trading caravans, and other ventures, who shared the profits and risks amongst all members of their society.  The trading societies were powerful voices within Garrkimang and its dominions, but since all military and religious power was reserved for the monarchy, the trading societies never acquired the same political power which the factions did elsewhere.

--

Garrkimang occupied what was probably the best agricultural site of any Classical city.  It had the convenience of large areas of productive land upriver suitable for the Gunnagalic system of dryland agriculture, and a series of natural lagoons and other wetlands downriver which were easily expanded into the managed artificial wetlands which the Gunnagal so favoured.  The wetlands downriver of Garrkimang were productive enough that the First Speakers encouraged the diversion of some water to irrigate a few chosen crops, unlike the usual Gunnagal farming system which relied on rainfall.  This irrigation was mostly for their favoured drug, kunduri, but also for the cultivation of a few fruits and other high-status foods [2].

With productive lands as the foundation of their power, the First Speakers turned Garrkimang into the capital of a large kingdom which controlled three significant rivers, the Murrumbidgee, the Lachlan, and the Macquarie.  They controlled almost all of these rivers, except for the farthest downstream areas of the Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan, which were under the control of the kingdom of Tjibarr.  By edict of the First Speaker, in 256 AD the kingdom became known as Gulibaga, the Dominion of the Three Rivers.

While Gulibaga was a powerful kingdom, for most of the Classical era it was only one nation amongst four.  The three Murray kingdoms of Tjibarr, Weenaratta, and Gundabingee all flourished during this era.  The four nations each had a vested interest in ensuring that none of their rivals grew too powerful, which was reflected in a fluid system of alliances that prevented one kingdom from completely defeating any of the other four.

The alliance system broke down in the Late Classical period, thanks to the social disruptions of the first blue-sleep epidemics in the mid-fourth century AD, and a more than usually faction-ridden aftermath in the kingdom of Tjibarr.  This let the First Speakers extend their control to the River Darling, a major tributary of the Murray, and the key transport route for tin from the northern mines.  Gulibaga kept its control over the tin trade from this time, despite efforts to dislodge its forces.  While tin was still traded further downriver to the other Classical kingdoms, Gulibaga received the largest share, and from then on they had better access to bronze than their rivals.

It was an advantage they would put to good use.

--

In the vanished era of the Classical Gunnagal’s ancestors, war was as much a series of raids for honour as it was a contest between nations.  The era of the Collapse changed that; wars were now fought for national gains.  Still, while Classical military tactics were more organised than those of their ancestors, they were not particularly advanced.  The archetypal Classical warrior carried a wooden shield and a bronze-tipped spear, sometimes also with a short sword.  Armour was rare, save perhaps an emu leather helmet.  Captains might have more bronze armour, but the common Classical soldier was only lightly-protected.  Battle tactics and training were not particularly advanced; being a soldier was a part-time occupation for most people, and while the Classical Gunnagal knew how to form a line of battle, their coordination and discipline were both limited.

With a near-monopoly on bronze, Gulibaga’s warriors changed the old pattern.  The kingdom had the wealth and the resources to equip their leading warriors with better armour, typically a bronze helmet and greaves, and hardened leather breastplates.  They could afford to maintain the first large professional standing army, elite units who trained and deployed together.  They standardised and extended their tactics with a number of military innovations.  Professional Gulibagan warriors carried pikes and rounded shields, transforming them into Australia’s first heavy infantry, who could break almost any enemy line of battle.  In battle, the core infantry were supported by lightly-armed skirmishers who used bows with stone or bone-tipped arrows, and who helped to disrupt enemy formations.

By the mid fifth century AD, Gulibaga’s military organisation was clearly superior to anything developed by its Classical rivals.  The combination of better arms, armour and tactics would prove almost irresistible.

--

With its superior military organisation and resources, Gulibaga transformed itself from a kingdom into an empire.  In the name of the First Speakers, its armies waged war on its classical rivals, particularly its most powerful opponent, the kingdom of Tjibarr.  In a series of campaigns from 467 AD to 482 AD, Gulibagan armies conquered most of Tjibarr’s territory, although the city walls withstood siege after siege.  In 486-488 AD, a long siege finally broke through the walls of Australia’s most ancient city.

In previous wars between Classical kingdoms, similar victories had seen defeated monarchs being reduced to effective vassals, with “advisors” from the victorious kingdoms dictating policy.  Such advisors were usually thrown out within a few years, with the support of one of the other four kingdoms.  With the defeat of Tjibarr in 488, however, the First Speakers did something unprecedented: they deposed the old monarchs and created a new province with an appointed governor.  This action is usually taken to be the start of the Imperial era in the history of the Murray basin.  Some authorities use a later date of 556 AD, when Gulibagan armies subdued the forces of Gundabingee, the last surviving Gunnagal kingdom.  After this victory, the First Speaker renamed his nation to Watjubaga, the Dominion of the Five Rivers [3].  This would be the name by which it would be remembered.

With the resources of the Five Rivers at its command, Watjubaga expanded into Australia’s first and largest indigenous empire.  Its core territory remained the old Gunnagal lands along the Murray and Murrumbidgee, but its armies carried its rule to most of the agricultural regions of south-eastern Australia.  In the north, one of its major early accomplishments was the gradual expansion along the Darling until they conquered the New England highlands directly, taking over the sources of tin and gems.  To the south, they faced some determined resistance from the Junditmara peoples, who had their own developing kingdoms and a hierarchical social code based on duty to one’s elders, conformity, and rewarding loyalty.  Still, the might of professional discipline and imperial bronze saw the Junditmara kingdoms defeated one by one.

--

At its height around 850 AD, Watjubaga claimed suzerainty over territory which stretched from the Darling Downs in the north to Bass Strait in the south, and to the deserts and the Spencer Gulf in the west.  These northern and western borders represented what amounted to its natural frontiers.  In the north, the Darling Downs were inhabited by a set of feuding Gunnagalic peoples who dwelt in small villages and raided each other for emus and honour.  Their northern limits were bounded by the growth of the red yam, which does not grow properly in the tropics.  The Empire imposed its authority on these peoples, although the distance and the fractious nature of its subjects meant that its authority was perforce rather loose.

Likewise, the western and southern borders of the Empire were largely bound by desert and the seas.  Watjubaga controlled all of the thinly-inhabited lands west of the Darling River, and the more fertile lands further south around the Murray Mouth, the Spencer Gulf, and along Bass Strait.  They largely ignored the Eyre Peninsula, a small, lightly-settled agricultural land beyond the Spencer Gulf, since they deemed it too poor and too difficult to control without decent sailing technology.  Direct imperial control did not always end with the desert; imperial forces maintained a few inland colonies to access some key resources such as the silver, zinc and lead of Broken Hill, and a few salt and gypsum harvesting colonies on some of the dry inland lakes.

In the inland regions of Australia, imperial influence was minimal, although they did have some contact with the desert peoples.  Ancient trade routes stretched across much of the outback; ancient traders had travelled hundreds of kilometres across some desert routes when trading for flints and ochre.  With the establishment of imperial outposts along the desert fringes, some of these trade routes were expanded.  In a few locations with particularly high-value resources, the local hunter-gatherers found that they could mine a few key goods and trade these for food and metal tools from the agricultural peoples along the coast.

The most important of these routes became known as the Dog Road, which started at the imperial outpost of Port Augusta and ran over five hundred kilometres northwest to Coober Pedy.  Here, the local Ngarjarli people mined opals from one of the richest sources in the world.  The climate was far too dry to support a large population, or even a permanent population, but like most hunter-gatherer societies, the Ngarjali had a lot of under-used labour.

Thanks to the imperial interest in opals, the Ngarjali found a reason to mine those gems and establish a semi-permanent settlement at Coober Pedy, where some of their people slowly mined opals throughout the year.  Once a year, in June when the heat was least severe, the annual trading caravan set out from Port Augusta.  People and dogs pulled travois loaded with trade goods: clay vessels full of wattle-seeds, smoked meats, dried fruits, and ganyu (yam wine); metal tools; textiles such as clothing, baskets and bags; and kunduri (chewing tobacco).  When they reached Coober Pedy, they held a great celebration and trading fair with the Ngarjali, and exchanged opals for their trade goods.  This reliable food storage allowed the Ngarjali to occupy the same area for a large part of the year, although water shortages meant that they sometimes needed to move elsewhere.

--

While Watjubaga had clearly-defined natural borders in the north, west and south, its eastern frontier was more ambiguous.  In most regions, imperial authority ran as far as the Great Dividing Range; the combination of rugged terrain, lack of beasts of burden, and distance from the imperial heartland meant that conquering the backward peoples of the eastern seaboard was usually not deemed to be worth the effort.  In central Victoria, however, imperial armies had marched east from Junditmara lands and gained control of the lands around Port Philip Bay and West Gippsland.  In the headwaters of the Murrumbidgee, the Monaro plateau was occupied by sullen imperial subjects who sometimes paid tribute and often rebelled.  Further north, the rich farmlands of the Hunter Valley were inhabited by city-states who were reluctant imperial tributaries; this was the only region where imperial influence extended to the Tasman Sea.  Apart from the Hunter, the eastern seaboard of Australia was independent of imperial control.

As an empire, Watjubaga thus claimed immense territory, but in many cases its level of control was limited.  The empire maintained its predominance through its military strength, and more specifically through a core of well-equipped veteran soldiers who were the battlefield heavyweights of their day.  In a land without cavalry, the imperial heavy infantry could be relied on to shatter any opposing army in any battle on open ground.  Still, rebels often found ways to neutralise these tactics, particularly when fighting on irregular ground or resorting to raids and retreating to rugged terrain where the heavily-armoured imperial infantry had difficulty pursuing them.

Moreover, imperial manpower was limited.  Watjubaga drew its soldiers exclusively from the ethnic Biral, who mostly dwelt in the ancient territories around Garrkimang, formed a significant minority in the rest of the Five Rivers, and elsewhere were either a small ruling elite or inhabited a few colonies established both as garrisons and trading posts.  Joining the Biral was difficult for anyone of a foreign ethnicity; marrying in sometimes happened, but otherwise the only way to join was to persuade a Biral family to formally adopt someone, which was rare.  These limitations on imperial manpower became an increasing strain with the large territories where Watjubaga tried to maintain its rule.  The large distances and slow transportation technology meant that when away from one of the major rivers, even the local Biral elite often partially assimilated into the local culture, and the long lines of communication meant that local garrisons in distant territories were perpetually vulnerable to revolt.

--

At its height, Watjubaga ruled over vast territories, but it did not create much of a sense of unity amongst its subjects.  With the Biral forming an elite ruling class, the subject peoples were not particularly inclined to adopt Biral language or culture.  Some people learned Biral as a second language, since it was the language of government, but it did not become the primary language of any but the Biral themselves.

Still, while relatively few people could speak or write the Biral language, an increasing number of people in the Empire were literate.  Later archaeologists would be aware of this by the wealth of written information preserved in clay tablets.  Written accounts preserved considerable details about life within the empire, recorded in government records, legal documents and other archives, but also through an abundance of private documents such as letters, trade records, and religious texts.  Within most regions of the Empire, government administrators could simply place tablets announcing new proclamations or other news in town squares, and be confident that they would be read, understood, and the information conveyed to everyone in the city.

The nature of imperial rule varied considerably amongst the imperial regions.  Watjubaga’s core territories were the heavily-populated areas along the Murray and Murrumbidgee, and the almost as heavily-populated area around the Murray Mouth and along the Spencer Gulf.  Here, imperial administrators exercised considerable control over everyday life, using a system of labour drafts which required every inhabitant to perform a certain number of days service for the government every year.  This labour was required outside of the core harvest times, and was used to construct and repair public and religious buildings, maintain artificial wetlands, and sometimes to grow high-value crops such as corkwood (the key ingredient of kunduri), which were subject to imperial monopoly.

Outside of the core territories, the labour draft system was much less prevalent.  The imperial government tried to enforce it amongst the Junditmara in the south, with only limited success; this was one reason for the repeated revolts in that region.  In the more thinly-inhabited regions along most of the Upper Darling, power was usually delegated to local chieftains instead.  In the New England tablelands, the Empire ran the mines using a system of labour drafts, but otherwise imperial control there was limited.  In most other regions, the Empire did not even attempt to directly rule the territories, but simply collected tribute from local leaders.

In terms of religion, Watjubaga likewise exercised only limited control over the views of its subjects.  The imperial view of religion was syncretic; like all of the Gunnagalic religions shaped during the Great Migrations, it had assimilated some indigenous beliefs from the hunter-gatherers displaced during the population movements.  The underlying structure of their religion remained similar to their ancestors; they viewed the present world as only one aspect of the Evertime, the eternity which controlled everything and was everything.

Within this framework, the actions of individual heroes, sacred places, and of spiritual beings were all adopted in a cheerful mishmash of beliefs.  The Empire had no qualms about recognising other religious traditions as simply being aspects of the same underlying truth.  Their only concern was for the religious role of the First Speakers, who had always maintained the claim that they were best suited to interpret the wisdom of eternity.  Obedience to imperial authority was treated as accepting this religious duty; civil disobedience or outright rebellion were both treated as blasphemy.  Beyond that, what individuals or peoples believed was of no concern to the imperial administration.

--

The Imperial era spanned several centuries, and it brought immense wealth to the royal city of Garrkimang.  Extensive use of labour drafts usually meant that much of this wealth was invested into public architecture.  The First Speakers and other noble classes amongst the Biral had a fondness for large, ornate buildings.  At the height of imperial rule in 850 AD, Garrkimang had five separate palaces reserved for the royal family, and three dozen smaller palaces used by other noble families.  They also built several large temples and many smaller shrines dedicated to various spiritual beings or former First Speakers.  The royal city also held several large amphitheatres used for sporting and religious events.

Imperial engineering techniques were not particularly advanced by Old World standards, although they had developed considerably from their Classical ancestors.  Imperial engineers built very effectively using a wide variety of stones.  They had not discovered the arch, and lacked both the wheel and beasts of burden to help with moving building material around, but they had waterborne transport and lots of determination.  Imperial construction techniques tended toward large, solid stone buildings, with the walls supported by buttresses at key points.  They could build some very large columns, but they mostly used them for freestanding monuments or as aesthetic elements of building design, rather than as the main structural support.  In the most elaborate imperial buildings, the solid buttressed walls were overhung with large eaves, and the eaves themselves were supported with elaborately-carved columns.

Imperial aesthetics placed great value on elaborate displays in architecture.  This meant that imperial buildings were covered both within and without by a great many decorative elements: intricate ornamental stonework, sculptures, glazed tiles, murals, and above all bright, bright colours.  Some valued stones were transported large distances because their appearance was preferred; the marble quarries at Bathurst and Orange were far from Garrkimang, but that was of little concern to the imperial engineers who ordered large quantities of marble to decorate the exterior of the palaces and temples.  Colour was an integral part of most decorations, from some coloured stones, or glazed tiles, or from a variety of paints.  While the individual stylistic elements were wholly alien to European building traditions, the overall impression of imperial architectural styles would be reminiscent of the Baroque period.  In technicolour.

--

In technology, the advent of the Imperial era did not mark any dramatic improvement over the preceding Classical era.  While the First Speakers were not hostile to new learning, the focus of imperial efforts was on administration, aesthetic improvements, and organisation, rather than any particular sense of innovation.  Outside of engineering, architecture, and military technology, there were no fields where the First Speakers would be particularly interested in supporting experimentation or the application of new ideas.

Still, the spread of literacy allowed more communication of ideas, as did the growth of trade under the imperial peace.  This contributed to some technological advances during the Imperial era.  Metallurgy became considerably more advanced during this period, particularly in the development of many copper-based alloys.  The exploration of the Broken Hill ore fields led to the isolation of zinc ores, and these were used to create brass.  With imperial aesthetics being what they were, most brass and many alloys of copper with precious metals were used for decorative rather than functional purposes, although brass also came to be used in various musical instruments such as horns and bells.  Imperial smiths knew of iron, both from ancient experience of meteoric iron, and as a waste product from their extraction of zinc ores [4].  However, their smelting techniques did not produce sufficient heat to melt iron ore, and so they did not make any significant use of the metal.

The spread of literacy allowed the beginnings of the development of a medical profession in the Empire.  Doctors in the Imperial era began to make systematic studies of symptoms of sickness and injuries.  Clay tablets found by later archaeologists included some handbooks of illnesses, of their diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatments.  Many of these recommended treatments did not actually work very well, since internal illnesses such as fevers, epilepsy and parasites were believed to be spiritual phenomena which required treatments by priests.  Still, the early Imperial doctors had some capacity to assist in the treatment of physical injuries, using some basic surgical techniques, bandages, and a variety of lotions and herbal treatments derived from several plants to assist with treatment.  They also had a basic knowledge of dentistry, using drills to deal with cavities, using forceps and other specialised tools to extract teeth, and using brass wires to stabilise broken jaws.

Imperial scholars had some knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, although their methods were often basic.  They used some rudimentary trigonometry and related methods to assist with calculating engineering requirements, but they had little interest in algebra or other more advanced mathematical techniques.  They kept astronomical records on matters which interested them, but they ignored some other aspects.  They were aware of the movement of the planets, although they believed that both Venus and Mercury were each two separate bodies, not having made the connection between their appearances in the morning and evening.  They kept enough of a watch over the constellations to recognise novas and supernovas.  They kept particularly detailed records of comets, which they believed to be a visible representation of the reincarnation of a ‘great soul’ who would make their mark in the material world in the near future.  Being born during the appearance of a comet was a highly auspicious omen, to the point where heirs to the imperial throne would sometimes be chosen based on that fact alone.  They kept some occasional records of eclipses, although not systematically, and did not make any practical application of those records.  Imperial scholars had no real conception of the shape of the earth; they still assumed that it was flat.

--

Militarily, Watjubaga reached its largest borders in 822 AD.  One of their most celebrated generals, Weemiraga, had earlier subjugated the peoples around Port Philip Bay and West Gippsland, and incorporated them into the Empire.  In 821-822, he made his great “March to the Sea,” leading an army across the Liverpool Range into the Hunter Valley, and then to the Tasman Sea.  He imposed tributary status on the city-states in this region.  This accomplishment would be recorded in sculptures, murals, and legends, and it saw Weemiraga adopted into the royal family and become First Speaker from 838-853.

At this moment, it appeared that Watjubaga was in a period of ascendancy, but in fact these accomplishments were virtually the last military expansion which the Empire would achieve.  Logistical difficulties meant that the Empire would find it difficult to expand further, and the imperial regime soon faced internal problems.  After the death of Weemiraga, the succession was contested between three princes, leading to the worst civil war which the Empire had yet seen.  The civil war ended in 858, but other underlying trends were further weakening imperial rule.

Imperial rule had relied on two pillars of the state: a solid core of veteran heavy infantry equipped with bronze weapons and armour from the continent’s main supply of the metal, who could defeat any major uprising, and a system of garrison-colonies in the far-flung regions of the Empire to maintain a local presence there and ensure the main army would be rarely needed.  As the ninth century progressed, both of these pillars were being weakened.  The colonisation of Tasmania in the early ninth century provided a rich new source of tin and bronze which was outside the imperial monopoly, disrupting the trade networks and government revenue, and allowing peoples in the southern regions of Australia to gain access to better arms and armour.  Subject peoples were also becoming increasingly familiar with imperial military tactics, and through the legacy of several revolts developed ways to imitate or counter these military tactics.  Combined with the increased bronze supply, this meant that rebellious peoples could now field soldiers to match the imperial heavy infantry, and the Watjubaga military advantage waned.

The other main pillar of the state was also being undermined by a slower but more significant process of cultural assimilation.  The Biral governors and upper classes formed a small minority in most of the outlying regions, and imperial governors came to look more to local interests than the dictates of a distant First Speaker in Garrkimang.  Governors assumed more and more de facto independence, and successive First Speakers found it increasingly necessary to settle for payments of tribute and vague acknowledgement of imperial suzerainty, rather than maintaining any effective control.

The weakening of the imperial military advantage was manifested by two successive military disasters.  In the 860s, imperial forces were sent to subjugate the Gippsland Lakes region in south-eastern Victoria.  This was inhabited by the Kurnawal, a fiercely independent-minded people whose relatives had been one of the two main groups to cross Bass Strait and settle in Tasmania.  Thanks to that colonisation, the mainland Kurnawal had access to good bronze weapons, and they largely fought off the imperial forces.  The imperial commander conducted several raids and collected enough plunder to bring back to the First Speaker as a sign of victory, but the manifest truth was that the conquest had failed.

Worse was to follow in 886, when a new campaign was intended to launch a new March to the Sea and conquer the Bungudjimay around Coffs Harbour.  This time the imperial armies were defeated utterly, unable even to claim plunder.  This marked the resurgence of the Bungudjimay as an independent people, and within the next few decades they would begin raids into imperial territory around the New England tablelands.

The defeat in Coffs Harbour marked a devastating blow to imperial prestige.  Another disputed succession followed in the 890s.  While this did not turn into a major civil war as had happened four decades earlier, it encouraged already-rebellious subject peoples.  The Hunter Valley had always been a reluctant tributary, and actual payments of tribute had been largely non-existent since the 870s.  In 899, the city-states of the Hunter ceased acknowledging even the pretence of imperial overlordship, and the weakened Empire was in no condition to restore its authority.

While the ruling classes in Garrkimang found it easy to disregard the loss of the Hunter tributaries, thinking of it as only a minor matter, a much more serious rebellion followed.  The Junditmara peoples had long resented foreign rule, requiring substantial imperial garrisons.  A revolt over labour drafts in 905 provided a trigger for unrest, and in the next year it turned into a general Junditmara revolt.  The imperial troops were massacred or driven out of Junditmara-inhabited territory, and in 907 the army sent to reconquer them was outnumbered and defeated.  The Junditmara peoples established their own loose confederation to replace imperial rule.  They would take what they had learned of imperial technology, literacy, astronomy and other knowledge, and apply it to their own ends.  The loss of the Junditmara lands also made imperial rule over the rest of southern Victoria untenable, and they lost everything south of the Great Dividing Range within a few years of the Junditmara establishing independence.

With crumbling imperial authority in the south, the First Speakers turned to one last territorial expansion.  The Eyre Peninsula, beyond the Spencer Gulf, had long been disregarded by the Empire.  The peninsula was a small region of fertile land separated by a desert barrier from the nearest imperial city at Port Augusta.  The land was useful for agriculture, and had some very occasional trading links with the Yuduwungu across the western deserts, but had otherwise not much to recommend it, and the separation of deserts and water made a military campaign difficult.  Keen to restore some military prestige, the imperial government cared little for such details, and despatched forces who marched overland from Port Augusta.  The Peninsula peoples withdrew behind city walls, and although these were besieged and captured one by one, the long and bloody warfare did not justify the conquest.  While the Eyre Peninsula was proclaimed as conquered in 926, the loss of imperial manpower would hurt far more than the minor gain in resources.

After the conquest of the Eyre Peninsula, the remaining imperial structures started to rot from the periphery inward.  In the north, the local governors assumed effective independence, although the fiction of imperial control continued for two more decades.  The decisive break came in 945.  The governors of the five provinces which made up the region of New England had long been more sympathetic to their subjects than the distant proclamations of the First Speakers.  The governors announced their secession from the Empire in a joint declaration in 945, bringing the local Biral garrison-colonies with them, and raising additional local forces for defence.  Imperial forces were sent to reassert control of the source of tin (and many gems), and were defeated in a series of battles in 946-948.  This event, more than anything else, marked the collapse of the Empire.  Apart from some brief attempts to reconquer a rebellious Eyre Peninsula in the 970s, this marked the last time that the Empire would try to project military power outside of the heartland of the Five Rivers.

Imperial rule over the core of the Murray basin – the Five Rivers – persisted for much longer than the more distant territories, but with the same condition of gradual decline of imperial power.  The Biral remained a resented ruling class along the Murray proper, and revolts became increasingly common.  The First Speakers resorted to increasingly desperate measures to quell some revolts, including the wholesale razing of Weenaratta in 1043, but in the end, none of these measures were successful.  The lands around the Murray Mouth were lost in the 1020s, Tjibarr rebelled in 1057 and started to encroach further into imperial territory, and Gutjanal [Albury-Wodonga] asserted its independence in 1071, taking most of the dominions of the old kingdom of Gundabingee with it.  By 1080, the Empire consisted of little more than Garrkimang and its immediate hinterland; its borders had shrunk even further than the borders of the Classical kingdom.  Internal revolt removed the last of the First Speakers in 1124, leaving Garrkimang a decaying city filled with monuments to past imperial glories.

--

[1] The Kangaroos came from Gray, the Corellas from White, the Ravens from Black, the Kookaburras from Blue, the Echidnas from Azure, and the Possums from Red.  The old colours of Gold and Green were lost during the migrations.

[2] In modern Australia, this region has been transformed into the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.  This uses a system of weirs, canals and holding ponds to irrigate the area, and which is in turn fed by larger dams further upriver.  This has made the area very productive agriculturally.  In allohistorical Australia, Garrkimang engineers have developed their own complex system of dams and weirs to trap floodwaters and feed them into wetlands which are used, as elsewhere, for fishing and hunting.

[3] The Five Rivers are the Murray, the Murrumbidgee, the Lachlan, the Macquarie, and the Darling, all of which are part of the Murray-Darling basin.  The earlier Three Rivers did not include the Murray and Darling Rivers, but the nation was renamed when it extended control over those two major rivers.

[4] The process which the Imperial smiths have used to develop brass is distinct from that used elsewhere in the world.  Early brasses elsewhere were produced from calamine, which is an ore which contains zinc carbonate and zinc silicates, and which were melted with copper to produce brass.  In *Australia, the Imperial smiths have explored the massive Broken Hill ore deposits, initially for extraction of lead and native silver, both of which are abundant there.  Mining in this deposit will also mean that they discover sphalerite, an ore of zinc sulfide which has also has impurities of iron.  This can be melted to produce brass in the same way that calamine was elsewhere, but it also means that iron will frequently be encountered as an impurity in the waste products.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #10: Times of Bronze

Continuity note: this instalment follows on directly from the first section of the opening instalment (#0: First Contact) of the Prologue.

--

February - March 1310
The Illawarra, New South Wales, Australia

Kawiti of the Tangata had explored far and wide around Te Ika a Maui [North Island, New Zealand], and once to the even larger island to the south.  His father, who had taught him the arts of navigation, had sailed even further, being one of the pioneers who had guided the fleets of canoes bringing the Tangata from the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki.  He had heard many tales, oft fanciful and extravagant.  Yet Kawiti had never seen or heard of men like these.

Eight of them, no two men alike except that they all carried spears tipped with some strange yellowish-brown substance.  When he first saw them, he thought that they all had skins black as night.  Now he saw that that was a combination of shadows and artifice.  Once they stood out of the shadows, he could see that these strange men were not fully black of skin; the small patches of skin visible beneath their cloaks and armours were darker than his own, but not midnight-black.  Some sort of dye must have been used to darken the more visible parts of their skin.  To aid in hunting, or through some strange custom?  No way to know, not yet.

The leader of the dark men asked him another question in their incomprehensible language, pointing at them, then their boat, then to the water both north and south.  After a moment, Kawiti realised that the man was asking where they had come from.  He told his comrades to stay quiet – no point having everyone answering the question.  He pointed to him and his comrades, then the boat, then he pointed east, and made repeated pushing gestures to show that they had come from far to the east.

That provoked a mixed response from the dark men.  A couple laughed, as if not believing.  Others spoke in raised voices, their expressions showing disbelief.  The leader – if leader he truly was – snapped a command, and the arguments died back to murmurs.  He asked a single-word question: “Guda?”

Having no idea what the word meant, Kawiti settled for gesturing to include himself and his comrades again, then pushing many times to the east, to show how far away it was.

The dark men argued amongst themselves for a few moments more, until they settled down.  Their leader seemed to convince the others as much through volume as anything else.  He then turned back to Kawiti, and gestured at himself and his comrades.  “Raduru,” he said.  “Iya Raduru.”

Kawiti nodded, and gestured to himself and his fellows.  “Tangata.  We are Tangata.”

The leader of the Raduru gestured to himself.  “Gumaring.  Uya Gumaring.”

Kawiti gave his own name.

The dark men – the Raduru – all smiled after that.  Gumaring gave what sounded like more orders, from the crisp tone, and the Raduru passed over some gifts.  They handed over two water skins and some kind of orange, translucent substance which felt slightly soft against his fingers.  Almost like kauri gum, but different.  Gumaring mimed eating the gum.

“Here’s hoping that offering us food makes us guests,” his cousin Nene said.

“And here’s hoping that this isn’t like kauri gum,” Kawiti said.  Dried kauri gum could be dug from the earth, and was very useful for its gleam and appearance, but no-one ever ate it.

He chewed on a small portion of the gum, and found that it was sweet.  Very sweet.  He washed it down with a mouthful of water.  An unusual taste, but a pleasant one.  His fellows did the same.

“We should return the favour,” Kawiti said.  Except that all they had for food was cold, smoked moa meat and raw kumara [sweet potato].  Explorers were used to such fare, but he did not know if he wanted to offer it to strangers.  Did the Raduru see offering any food as a greeting, or would they prefer only something sweet or fine-tasting?  No way to know, so would if offend them more to offer no food in response, or to offer food they did not like?

Gumaring solved the matter for him.  He quietly regathered the now much-emptier water skins.  He gave some lengthy explanation which made no sense whatsoever – maybe wondering if they could learn a few words here and there – and then returned to using gestures.  He conveyed the idea that he wanted the Tangata to come with his men to the north, and copied Kawiti’s earlier gesture to indicate that it would be a long way to travel.

Using a variety of gestures and signals of his own, Kawiti managed to get through the idea that he and his comrades would travel in that direction, but by water.  He would not leave the canoe behind and have no way to reach home without making another, especially with no surety that they could make new sails.

Gumaring appeared happy enough with this, and then had another voluble discussion with the other Raduru.  As before, he seemed to settle it as much by volume as by persuasion.  After that, Gumaring kept pointing to himself, then to the boat, indicating that he wanted to travel with them, leaving the other men to journey by land.  Kawiti was more than happy for that; having Gumaring along would avoid any problems with wherever these people lived at the other end.  Still, he asked the other Tangata, preferring to make sure that they were happy rather than have friction on the trip.

“Fine.  Just be glad they all didn’t want to come,” Nene said.  The others gave their agreement, too.

All of the Raduru came back to the canoe.  They seemed utterly fascinated by it, as if they had never seen a boat like it before.  “What would they think of a big waka?” Kawiti asked.

The other Tangata laughed.  This small exploration canoe could carry a few men a long way, but it was nothing like the much larger waka which had carried their fathers from Hawaiki, and which were used nowadays to take settlers further south along Te Ika a Maui.  A waka could carry eighty men across the seas to a new home.

Even this one? Kawiti wondered, for a moment, but dismissed the thought.  He was here to explore, not to raid.  The Big Man back home would decide whether to settle or to trade or to ignore this new land altogether.  Still, from what he had seen of these Raduru and their shields and strange spears, it would not be easy to push them aside, if they wanted no newcomers.  Te Ika a Maui had been empty, and thus easily settled.  This land...  Wait and see, he reminded himself.

Once off the shore, the wind favoured them.  It blew from the land, which made it easy enough for Kawiti to take the canoe north by sail power alone.  The canoe could be paddled if they absolutely needed to, but he would rather not go to that effort.  Who could say how much further north the Raduru dwelt?

Gumaring proved to be a pleasant enough sailing companion.  He did not become disturbed or aggressive, and spent most of his time going back and forth with Nene and Kawiti about the meanings of a few words in each other’s languages.  Kawiti was most intrigued by found the strange yellow-brown substance which these Raduru used.  Gumaring had a shield made out of it, which gleamed, and a serviceable knife, and a spearhead, which were much duller.  The substance seemed to be as hard as most stones, and looked to be perfect for making all sorts of tools.

After a few attempts, Gumaring indicated that his people called the substance dunu.  After even more effort, Kawiti managed to get across a question about where the substance came from.  By virtue of lots of gestures, mimes, and lengthy if incomprehensible explanations, Gumaring explained that dunu was made from two substances melted together.  One was apparently dug from the earth, and the other came from somewhere to the south.  A very long way away, from the way in which Gumaring kept making pushing gestures.

Just how big is this island? Kawiti wondered.  He knew no way to get that question across, but he was extremely intrigued.  The two moa-filled islands which the Tangata had found for themselves were far larger than any other islands known about anywhere, according to what he his father and every other navigator had said.  How could this western island be even bigger?

They sailed north for a while, enough for the sun to sink noticeably lower over the western land.  They passed several beaches, then neared a rather large headland which jutted out into the sea.  At Gumaring’s indication, he steered the canoe wide of the headland.  When they passed, he saw that a building had been built near the highest point on the headland.  Even from the distance, he could see that the whole building had been made out of some light yellow stone.  As their canoe passed, smoke started to pour from the building.  A watchtower and a signal fire, he supposed.  Gumaring tried to explain more about it, but Kawiti and Nene could not figure out his meaning.

Once around the headland, he saw a couple of other small canoes in the water, being rapidly paddled toward the shore.  Made from some kind of bark sewn together, from what he could see of them, not dug out from a tree trunk like any proper canoe should be.  He vaguely wondered why these Raduru needed to do that, when they had so many trees to shape into dugouts, and why they did not use outriggers to stabilise their canoes on the seas.  Maybe they knew no better; it would explain why they had been so fascinated by the first glimpse of the Tangata canoe.  If those bark-skin canoes were as flimsy as they looked, he would not take one out of sight of land, and given a choice, he wouldn’t even take them onto the water.

Thoughts of canoes were driven from his mind as they neared a small sheltered harbour.  The people in the other canoes landed them and carried them up the beach, but other people were waiting to meet them.  A lot of people.  A couple of hundred men lined the shore, waiting for them.  It was hard to be sure at a distance, but it looked as if they all had spears and shields.  Beyond the beach rose walls of the same creamy-yellow stone which had been used to make the watchtower.

Gumaring leaped off the canoe as soon as it touched sand underneath the waves, even before it was fully ashore.  He started shouting at the other Raduru while he ran toward them.  Kawiti ignored them for the moment, and made sure that the canoe was brought ashore properly.  He needed to make sure that it was above the high-water mark.  That much he could do.  Keeping the canoe safe from the Raduru would be another matter, but they seemed friendly enough so far.

More raised voices carried across from where Gumaring spoke to his fellows, but they sounded more excited than angry.  By the time Kawiti and the other Tangata had secured the canoe above the high-water mark, the crowd of warriors had separated somewhat.  Gumaring gestured for them to follow him.  “Bigan,” he kept repeating, over and over.  Presumably that meant something like “come,” but who could say for sure?

Gumaring led them toward the walled town, or whatever it was.  A few of the Raduru followed behind, while others dispersed.  As they drew near, Kawiti’s gaze focused mostly on the creamy-yellow walls.  It looked something like the sandstone he had seen in a few places in Te Ika a Maui, but not quite the same colour.  Whatever it was made of, though, the wall was high.  Higher than a man could reach.  These Raduru must expect raids from their neighbours, then, especially if they had gone to the trouble of building a watchtower.

“What are those birds?” Nene asked, pointing off to the left.  Not far from the walls, a large space of land had been enclosed by a fence and ditch.  Inside it crowded a large number of birds.  Big, flightless birds, reminiscent of moa, although no moa had a black-feathered head with patches of naked blue skin, like those bird heads which poked over the fence to watch the people outside.

“Not moa,” one of the other Tangata said.  “Ever tried to keep moa fenced in?”

Kawiti chuckled, as did the others.  A few hunters had tried to herd moa into enclosures to keep them around to be killed during harder times.  It never worked.  If a moa took fright, it would run in panic.  If there was nowhere to run except into a fence, then the moa would run into the fence, either killing itself or breaking down the fence.  Sometimes both.

“Don’t look as big as moas,” Nene said.  “Not the decent ones, anyway.”

Kawiti shrugged.  The biggest moas sometimes weighed more than two men, well worth the hunting, even with the ever-increasing distances needed to travel to find and kill them.  These birds looked smaller, but would still make for a fine feast.

Gumaring led them inside the stone walls of the Raduru town.  Inside, buildings of stone and wood crowded near to each other, except for one road which ran through the town.  Some kind of dark grey stones had been laid into the ground to form a solid surface on the street.  That was a marvellous idea – stones would not turn to mud whenever it rained.

“How many people live here?” Nene asked, as they walked along the winding street.  Building after building lay on either side, with narrower unpaved streets running off.  “Hundreds?  Tens of hundreds?”

Kawiti nodded.  The entire extended family networks of their iwi [clan] numbered less than ten hundreds of people.  This crowded town had to hold at least that many people.  How numerous were the Raduru?  The more he thought on it, the more he doubted that the Big Man would ever order the settlement of this western island.  Not anywhere that the Raduru claimed, anyway.

About a dozen of the Raduru warriors still followed them into the town; the rest had returned to whatever they were doing before the Tangata arrived.  Gumaring led the way to a large stone building at the top of a small hill.  The building was surrounded by an open area paved with more stones, and separated from the rest of the town by a low wall about knee-height.

A man waited inside the paved area.  A brief glance confirmed him as someone of high status, with elaborate, colourful clothes and some accoutrements made from the same dunu which the other Raduru used for spearheads and some shields.  This was clearly the Big Man of the Raduru.  He did not bear any shield or other weapons, save for a gleaming dunu dagger at his belt.  He wore a cloak wrapped around him, dyed in alternating lines of green and light blue, and fastened by a clasp of a material which looked like dunu, but which had a yellower, brighter sheen.  He had a bracelet on each arm made from the same metal, and several other decorations of dunu.  His headdress was an elaborate work formed in three overlapping circles, one projecting from either side of his head, and the third just above it.  Brightly coloured feathers had been attached to the headdress, an iridescent arrangement of greens, blues, oranges and yellows.

Gumaring dropped down to one knee before the Big Man, and lowered his head level with his neck.  He motioned for the Tangata to do the same.  Kawiti did so, and the others followed his lead.

When they rose, the Big Man exchanged a few words with Gumaring, but did not try to speak to the Tangata directly.  Kawiti did not know whether that was because the Big Man was smarter than Gumaring – who kept trying to speak with them in a language which they did not understand – or whether the Big Man thought he was too important to speak to them directly.  No way to know, yet, but Kawiti wanted to find out as much as he could about these Raduru, including what their Big Man thought.  Returning to Te Ika a Maui now would mean only a few brief tales, which would not do much to increase his status.  Being the first to bring back a detailed account of some of the Raduru learning would be much more useful.

The Big Man turned and walked to the wall of the main building.  A fire burned here, with a woman tending to it.  A small rounded vessel made of another strange substance hung above the fire, with steam wafting occasionally from the lid.  Kawiti was not sure exactly the rounded vessel was made from; it looked almost like clay, but harder and drier, and decorated with patterns of black lines and spirals.  They waited while the woman ladled some of the boiling water into six cups made from the same kind of substance as the boiling vessel.  The woman sprinkled some sort of bright green powdered substance onto the top of each cup – they looked like crushed leaves – then stirred it in with a smaller ladle.

The Big Man took each of the cups and handed them to the Tangata one by one.  He said something which sounded formalised and slow, although the words were as unintelligible as everything else.  The scent wafting up from the cup smelled pleasantly sweet, but with a hint of something more tart underneath.  At the Big Man’s gesture, he took a slow sip from the cup; the water was hot, but not undrinkable.  The flavour was oddly pleasant; the drink had more than a hint of tartness, stronger than he had had expected from the smell, but still drinkable [1].  He finished the drink, and the others did the same.  At a guess – and he hated to guess – this was how the Big Man welcomed guests.  Which was good; being accepted as a guest should give some protection from trouble.

After that, Gumaring showed them to a building near the Big Man’s house, and indicated that they could live here.  They spent the next few hours discussing the implications of all that they had seen here.  There was much to wonder about, since so much of what they had seen was new and alien.  No-one was sure which of these new things was the most important, but they were all sure that what they had seen here could be very useful back in Te Ika a Maui.

That evening, they were invited to a feast.  About a hundred people were there eating, about half of them women.  That was unlike the Tangata, where the women would only eat once the men were finished.  He said, “No-one touch a woman here unless she touches you first.  Don’t let your gaze linger on any woman for too long, either.”  Among the Tangata, nothing could be more guaranteed to start a fight than over women, and he suspected that the same held true here.

Throughout the feast, he paid little attention to the people, but more to the food.  The centrepiece was a couple of large roasted birds, which from their size had to be like the ones they had seen on the way in.  They were certainly worth the eating, although he thought that he preferred moa.  Besides the meat, there were a variety of vegetables to eat, spiced with a variety of flavours which he enjoyed without being able to put a name to them.  He recognised one of the plants as a kind of yam, something like those which the Tangata had brought to Te Ika a Maui, but of a strange red colour.  They grew much larger than anything which could be grown on that island, too.  That interested him more than anything else which he had seen so far.  Sweet potato, yams, taro and other crops did not grow well on Te Ika a Maui, at least compared to what his father had said about how large they grew back on Hawaiki [2].  And a man could not live on moa alone.  Would these red yams and other foods be better-suited to growing back east?

The Tangata’s discussions after the feast that night were slower, since it was harder to think on a very full stomach, but they all agreed that they wanted to stay for longer.  There were plenty of questions which Kawiti wanted to ask, once he learned the words to use.  Starting with how big this land really was.

The Tangata were allowed to stay for several weeks.  The Raduru seemed to have endless hospitality for guests.  Kawiti was able to find out much more about the Raduru.  He found out early on that they had neighbours to the south that they were at intermittent war with, which seemed to consist of a series of raids every few months, but nothing more.  He learned of the many plants they grew, of red yams, of wealth-trees which produced edible seeds and gum and had many other uses, of flax and nettles which they used for weaving and linen and ropes.  He learned of the emus and ducks which they raised tame, like dogs, so that they could have them to eat without needing to go hunting.  He learned how they shaped and baked clay into pottery – such a useful thing!  He learned of the metal dunu, the working metal of so many uses, and the sun and moon metals which they used for ornamental purposes.  These Raduru were fond of decorating everything, it seemed.  Their Big Man and his wives dressed the most ornately, but everyone had at least one set of brightly-decorated clothes.

Kawiti even had the chance to join them on a couple of hunts.  They used rangelands to the south to hunt for a strange hopping animal which they called kangaroo [3].  These kangaroos were hard to find, but the meat had a stronger, more welcome flavour than emu, which was why they still hunted for it.  The Raduru he went with laughed at him sometimes when he hunted; Gumaring explained that they thought he was clumsy.  The laughter stung at first, but he soon learned how effortlessly the Raduru could move without being seen.  Even knowing exactly where they were, he still sometimes could not see them.  Moa were much easier to hunt than kangaroos; as often as not a man could walk right up to them.  These kangaroos were another prospect altogether, and a man had to learn to camouflage himself well to come near enough to strike them with arrow or spear.

It took several weeks before he or the other Tangata could communicate with the Raduru at anything past the basics.  Gestures could only go so far, but they did learn a few words here and there, enough to let him attempt some longer conversations.  At one of the evening feasts, after a successful hunt which saw the Big Man give Gumaring the prize cut from the kangaroo he had killed, Kawiti asked the question he had wanted to ask for so long.  “How big this land?’

Gumaring said, “Half the world.”

Just when I thought that we understood each other, Kawiti thought, but he persisted.  “How long to walk to other side of land?”

“Land go on forever,” Gumaring said.  “Half world land, in west, other half world water, in east.  Little water on land, river and swamp and lagoon, just as little land on water, like island you come from.  But most on each half of world.  No end to land if go west; it go on forever, like time.”

Odd.  All lands were islands, in the end.  Water surrounded everything, just as in the end of time it would cover everything, but that meant that this must be a very large island.  Bigger even that Te Ika a Maui, by everything Kawiti had seen and heard.

He tried a question which might get a clearer answer.  “Who else live on this land?”

A couple of nearby people overheard that question, and it provoked another of the arguments of which the Raduru were so fond.  Eventually Gumaring won the argument by volume, as he usually did.  “People some-like us live north and south.  Putanjura live north, snakes of Nyumigal live south.  Some times with them both we talk, some times we fight.”

“And to the west?” Kawiti asked.

“No easy to cross big up,” Gumaring said.  A moment later, Kawiti realised he meant the cliffs which lined the interior along this coast, rising up high and leaving only rugged terrain beyond.  “High empty country, where few hill-men live, but not else much.  Not know who live past that, not for sure.  Wanderer-trader-liars go, come back, say what they want make them look brave or see what tales fools believe.”

More argument followed, and this time one of the other speakers won, calling someone else over.  Kawiti could never pronounce this man’s name properly; the closest he could get was Junibara, but that was not quite right.

Junibara said, “Past big up, hills rise high-high.  Paths go through for those-know-guide, but long time take.  Go far, land flat and dry.  River-men live there, in big, big towns.  One called... Garr-ki-mung.  Hundreds of hundreds live there.  River-men no have sea, so make own lakes for fish.  Have much-much dunu and drink water-that-burns-and-bravens.  Each River-Man think he best in world, always speak and not let other man finish talking.  Big Man there and his servants store words in clay so always know what-happen-where-when.  Dry there, always dry, except where river flows.”

Kawiti kept his face still.  This land was very, very big, then, and full of people.  Rahiri, the Big Man of the Tangata back home, would be very interested in all of this.  Kawiti was not sure what Rahiri would want to do once he had heard it.  For himself, he thought that coming back here again and again might be the best use for the navigation skills which his father had made him learn, no matter how much he had hated it at the time.

--

[1] These are leaves from the lemon-scented tea tree (Leptospermum petersonii), which in historical Australia were used by early colonial settlers to make a substitute for tea.  The flavour is reminiscent of lemon, although not quite as tart.

[2] Despite what has sometimes been written about them, the Maori did grow a variety of Polynesian crops in New Zealand, not just sweet potato.  However, these plants often did not grow very well, and even those which grew the best – yams and taro – were mostly restricted to north-facing gardens in the northern part of the North Island.  Even sweet potato did not grow in much of the South Island.

[3] Of course, the Raduru words for kangaroo (and emu, and quite a few other things) are different to their historical equivalents, but they have been translated for convenience.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #11: On The Eve Of The Storm

This instalment of Lands of Red and Gold gives an overview of Australasia as it developed over the millennia since the invention of agriculture, and then a broad overview of how things are in 1618, on the eve of first contact with Europeans.  Some of the cultures mentioned in this overview will be explored in more detail in subsequent instalment.

--

Sometime in the distant unrecorded allohistorical past, a wild yam growing along the River Murray in south-eastern Australia mutated into a new form.  The result was a domesticable plant called the red yam, which grew wild along most of the central Murray.  Red yams were just one plant among many until humans arrived in Australia.  When they reached the Murray, red yams became a staple part of their diet, but there was no particular need to domesticate them (yet).

When the glaciers retreated and the climate entered the current interglacial period, humans around the world started down the road to domesticating plants.  The red yam is a more difficult crop to domesticate than some other founder crops, but by around 4000 BC, the plant was fully domesticated.  Other plant domestications followed this, most notably another root vegetable called murnong, and several species of wattles, fast-growing trees which bear edible seeds and which have multitudinous other uses.  These formed the core of an indigenous Australian agricultural package.  These crops are largely perennial, drought-tolerant plants which are well-suited to regions of low or irregular rainfall.  As perennials, they also need less labour to produce a useful harvest; the yield per worker for Australian crops is very high.  This allows Australian societies to sustain a much higher percentage of their population in non-agricultural roles than other comparable early agricultural peoples.

The Gunnagal, Australia’s first civilization, emerged along the Murray between 2500 and 1000 BC.  Their ancestors were already using domesticated crops, but inspired by contact with eel-farming peoples further south, the Gunnagal developed a complex system of artificial lakes and wetlands.  These wetlands gave them an excellent source of food from fishing, hunting water birds, and gathering water plants.  The planning and organisation needed to build and maintain these wetlands resulted in the development of hierarchical societies and an organised form of government.

The early Gunnagal flourished for about sixteen centuries.  They developed many of the fundamentals of civilization: pottery and other ceramics; weaving; metallurgy in copper, lead and arsenical bronze; complex oral law codes and an established government; an organised trade system; and some domesticated animals (ducks and dingos).  They did not invent full writing, although they had a developing proto-writing system which used symbols to represent ownership, especially for trade goods, and to indicate container contents.  Gunnagal culture spread along the length of the Murray.  Religious preferences and reliance on artificial wetlands meant that their settlements were largely confined to the vicinity of the river.

The Gunnagal culture of this period (usually called the Formative era) collapsed after 900 BC, under the pressure of depleted soils and prolonged drought.  Many of the displaced peoples expanded across Australia in a series of population movements which would be called the Great Migrations.  Gunnagalic-speaking peoples spread their languages, culture, and agriculture across much of south-eastern Australia.  The new farming communities spread almost as far north as the Tropic of Capricorn, and to the eastern and southern coastlines of Australia; their western border was the deserts of central Australia.  Agriculture spread even further than the limit of the Gunnagal migrations; red yams and a few other crops spread across the deserts to the fertile south-western corner of Australia, which in time would develop its own civilization only loosely connected to peoples further east.

The farming communities formed in the Great Migrations began as isolated settlements, small villages and the like; they would take time to develop into larger political units.  Along the Murray itself, the Gunnagal survivors developed better agricultural techniques and through trade contact received a new domesticated animal, the emu.  In time, their urban civilization recovered into what would be termed the Classical era.  In this time, the Gunnagal developed from small city-states into four kingdoms.  They developed a full writing system, mostly used for inscriptions and clay tablets, and this became the basis of a developing government bureaucracy [1].  They perfected the use of tin-alloyed bronze, replacing the older arsenical bronzes, and this new metal became an integral part of their increasing technological expertise.  They were particularly successful when working in stone; some of the buildings built in the early days of the Classical era would still be standing and in use two millennia later when first visited by Dutch explorers.  The Classical Gunnagal kingdoms were at the heart of extensive trade networks which stretched across the eastern half of the continent, and which carried their culture and ideas far beyond their political borders.

Classical Gunnagal culture survived for centuries.  It endured the rise of Australia’s first major epidemic disease, blue-sleep fever, a variant of avian influenza which infected humans.  The demise of the Classical Gunnagal eventually came from within.  The kingdom of Garrkimang, centred on the eponymous city, was one of the four nations of the Classical Gunnagal.  Unlike the others, it was located on a major tributary, the Murrumbidgee, not the Murray proper.  The city had been founded during the Great Migrations, and its social structure was less faction-ridden than the older and more traditionalist cities along the main river.  Under the determined and largely capable rule of a dynasty of prophet-kings, the kingdom of Garrkimang grew into the largest and wealthiest nation on the continent.

Garrkimang rose as a cultural and military power and eventually eclipsed the other Classical kingdoms.  Trading wealth started its growth, but the kingdom’s ultimate success was founded on a number of military innovations.  They had greater access to bronze than any other Classical peoples, and created a system of well-armed heavy infantry which used long pikes and shields.  Combined with better tactics and training, these soldiers transformed Garrkimang into an empire.  Its armies first conquered the other Classical kingdoms, then expanded much further.  After conquering the last surviving Classical rival in 556 AD, the nation took the name Watjubaga, the Five Rivers (the Murray, Murrumbidgee, Darling, Lachlan and Macquarie).

Watjubaga was Australia’s first and largest indigenous empire.  At its height, it claimed suzerainty over territory which stretched from the Darling Downs in the north to Bass Strait in the south, and to the deserts and the Spencer Gulf in the west.  Its eastern border was mostly formed by the Great Dividing Range, apart from tributary city-states in the Hunter Valley.  It reached its greatest territorial extent in 822 AD, but its primacy did not last long.  Economic disruptions formed by the colonisation of Tasmania and increase in the bronze supply unravelled much of the economy, subject peoples learned how to counter imperial military tactics, and logistical difficulties meant that outlying regions grew independent of imperial control.  Revolts and military disasters saw most of the outlying regions gain independence by the mid-tenth century.  The imperial heartland around the Murray and Murrumbidgee gained independence more gradually, and the last vestiges of the Empire were overthrown in 1124 AD.

The Imperial period coincided with the colonisation of Tasmania.  Seafaring techniques amongst Gunnagalic peoples were not an early specialty, but their technology slowly improved.  In time, this led to the colonisation of the Bass Strait islands, then, in the ninth century AD, the settlement of Tasmania itself.  Tasmania was colonised by two distinct groups of peoples, the Tjunini who entered via King Island in the northwest, and the Kurnawal first colonised Flinders Island in the northeast, then Tasmania itself.  The Tjunini settled most of the northern coast.  The Kurnawal were initially established along the north-eastern coast, but after the War of the Princess (which would become immortalised in song), were driven to the eastern coast.  The central highlands and rugged western coast of Tasmania were initially left to the native hunter-gatherer inhabitants, the Palawa [2].  Tasmania has rich reserves of tin, which were quickly exploited.  The Tjunini and Kurnawal made more extensive use of bronze than anywhere else in Australia, and they also exported considerable quantities of tin back to the mainland.

The collapse of the Empire did not mean the decline of agriculture or of the human population over its former lands.  Indeed, the growing size of the subject populations was one of several factors which had weakened imperial control.  This increasing population inevitably had its effects on Australia’s natural environment.  Increased farming meant some cases of local deforestation and habitat destruction.  Fortunately for the Australian peoples, their perennial agriculture did not produce the same soil erosion which European farming practices would produce in another history.  Still, the changing habitats meant that much of the local flora and fauna were being displaced.  Large kangaroos and wild emus were usually hunted out near any settlements.  Some trees and other plants became locally extinct, or even completely extinct if they had a limited geographical range.  Other Australian wildlife was likewise displaced: possums, wombats, wallabies, bandicoots, and so forth became increasingly rare over the agricultural areas of the continent.

While politically fragmented, the cultures of the Murray basin and their southern neighbours flourished in the post-Imperial period.  Australia’s deadliest epidemic disease, the Waiting Death (Marnitja), emerged in the thirteenth century and caused widespread death, but the population recovered over time.  These cultures were focused mostly on themselves, defining the Murray kingdoms and their Junditmara neighbours as the only people possessing true civilization.  Save as sources of trade goods, they had little regard for the lands outside.  They were vaguely aware of the Yuduwungu and related peoples in south-western Australia, but only occasional travellers visited those distant regions.  The arid interior was a source of some metals, gems and salt, with a few mining colonies and trading contact with some local hunter-gatherers who adopted semi-sedentary lifestyles trading gems and salt for food.  Otherwise, this region too was largely ignored.

The major urban areas of Australia also regarded the eastern seaboard of Australia as an uncivilized backwater.  Separated from the older cultures of the west by the Great Dividing Range, the eastern seaboard was for a long time only thinly-populated.  A few valuable spices grew there and were traded west of the mountains, but for the most part the rugged geography and lack of effective sea travel meant that the eastern coast consisted of scattered agricultural communities, with few large states.  Two developing kingdoms were forming in the Hunter Valley and around Coffs Harbour, but most of the rest remained a backwater.  Still, it was in these eastern lands that Australia’s isolation came to an end.

In 1310, voyaging Maori from New Zealand landed in the Illawarra region on the coast of modern New South Wales.  The initial contact was wary, but peaceful.  An exchange of crops, animals and ideas followed over the next few decades.  The Maori obtained Australian crops such as red yams, wattles and murnong, and animals such as the emu and the wood duck.  The Maori also learned about new technologies such as metallurgy and ceramics.  The Australian peoples gained new crops such as kumara (sweet potato), taro and New Zealand flax.  They also received new inspiration in sailing and navigation techniques, first from individual Maori who settled on the eastern coast, and then from diffusion of ideas.  Sailing technology slowly spread up and down the east coast and eventually along the southern coast, leading to new trade routes and increased contact between Australian peoples.  Contact between Australia and New Zealand continued until the time of European arrival, although the volume of trade was limited; only a few high-value, low-bulk items were worth trading at such distances, such as greenstone (jade), kauri amber, some high-quality textiles, raw tin and some worked metal tools and weapons.

With the advent of new sailing technology, much more effective long-range contact became possible between Australian cultures.  Some societies were more open to these new technologies than others.  In particular, the inhabitants of Kangaroo Island took the new sailing techniques and became the leading maritime trading power in Australia.  Their voyagers plied the stormy waters of Australia’s southern coast, bypassing the desert barriers between east and west.  In time, they or their successors may well have made contact of their own with Australia’s northern neighbours.  However, their progress was cut short on 6 August 1619, when Dutch sailors under the command of Frederik de Houtman landed on the banks of the Swan River...

--

Australasia in 1618 is a complex group of societies, ranging from literate Iron Age urbanites to desert-dwelling hunters whose ways of life have barely changed in the last ten thousand years.  It is a region with much common heritage, and some vast cultural differences.  It is a region where the inhabitants have learned to master the challenges of nature, of flood, fire and drought, but where a much greater storm will soon break on their shores.

The south-western corner of Australia is a small region of fertile land surrounded by hostile deserts.  Some domesticated crops spread here in the sixth century BC, and a trickle of new ideas and technology has continued ever since, but the region developed largely in isolation.  Lacking a reliable source of tin, the region had only very limited supplies of bronze, but in the last few centuries, they discovered the arts of working in iron.  Iron tools and weapons here are the most advanced in Australia.  The Atjuntja were the most successful people to adopt these new technologies, and created a dominion which stretches from Esperance in the east to the Indian Ocean, and with its most northerly outpost a salt-harvesting works and penal colony at Shark Bay.  The Atjuntja rule over an empire of multiple ethnicities, who speak dialects which are sometimes different enough to be considered distinct languages.  Under the watchful eye of their armies, a steady stream of tribute flows to their capital at the White City [Albany].  The Atjuntja pour this wealth into two of their main passions; they are masters of working in stone and arranging the natural world to suit their vision.  The carefully shaped glories of the Garden of Ten Thousand Steps and the grandeur of the Walk of Kings would be considered amongst the wonders of the world, if the world knew of them.

Northward of the Atjuntja dominions to the north are lands which they consider barren and useless.  For northern Australia, particularly the northwest, has been the least-changed part of the continent.  Until very recently, the inhabitants did not posses any crops suitable for tropical agriculture.  Separated by desert barriers, the hunter-gatherer peoples are the most isolated on the continent.  They do have some sporadic trade contact, which has seen the spread of some copper tools and a very few of iron, occasional beads, pendants or other jewellery, and even rarer textiles and ceramics, but their life here is the least changed from what would be recognised in our own history.

Eastward of the Atjuntja lies a treeless, barren plain which until recently formed their only line of communication with other civilizations.  Now that role has been filled by a people who call themselves the Nangu, but who are known to outsiders as Islanders.  They are inhabitants of Kangaroo Island who have taken the Polynesian navigational package and adapted it to the conditions of the Southern Ocean.  The Islanders regularly voyage from the Atjuntja dominions in the west to Tasmania in the east, and occasionally beyond; their trading ships sometimes reach the coastal cities of southern New South Wales.  North of the Island lies the Eyre Peninsula, a small fertile patch of land bounded by sea and northern deserts.  This land is occupied by several city-states who have a loose alliance to defend each other against the expansionistic powers further east.

The Yorke Peninsula and the eastern side of the Gulf St Vincent, including modern Adelaide, contain richly fertile land and an abundance of copper and other metals.  This is a much-contested region between two of the great powers of Australia.  One of these is the resurgent Post-Imperial kingdom of Tjibarr, which has its heartland along the central Murray but which seeks to control the wealth of the lower Murray and the lands beyond.  Tjibarr is the most powerful kingdom to reemerge after the collapse of the old Watjubaga Empire, but it is only one of several.  The Post-Imperial Murray basin is a seething sea of cultural discontent overlying a wealth born of trade routes which have grown stronger since the collapse of the Empire.  Famously argumentative and faction-ridden, the heirs of the Gunnagal show no inclination to reunite into any new empire.  Nor have they managed to re-establish any control over the rebellious peoples of the Monaro plateau.  That high country is still occupied by the Nguril and Kaoma, non-Gunnagalic peoples who have learnt to fight in the mountains, and who sometimes raid into the low-lying regions of the Murray basin.

When fighting for control of the Murray Mouth and its environs, the Tjibarr kingdom is opposed by the most populous empire in Australia, that of the Yadji.  Named for their ruling dynasty, the Yadji are the descendants of the old Junditmara.  With relatively rain-drenched lands and fertile soils, the Yadji dominions stretch from south-eastern South Australia and almost all of modern Victoria south of the Great Dividing Range, as far as East Gippsland.  The Yadji are a rigidly hierarchical society bound by conventions of religion and tradition, and their government is among the most organised in Australasia.  Trade contact via the Islanders has recently acquainted them with the arts of working in iron.  They are particularly adept at building roads to allow swift transport between the key regions of their empire.  Only in the north and north-west do they face serious opposition from the kingdom of Tjibarr, which relies on riverine control of the Murray to fend off the military advances of the Yadji.

To the north and east of the Yadji and the Murray basin dwell backward peoples, at least according to the standards of the city dwellers of those ancient lands.  North of the Murray kingdoms lies the dry plains of modern New South Wales.  A land of mostly flat ground and fading rains as one moves further west, this is not a region to support a large population in any one place.  Food is not the limitation; even here, dryland Australian agriculture can supply a sufficient harvest to support a decent population.  The limitation is water.  Away from the permanent rivers, only limited amounts of water can be collected from wells, small dams, and rainwater cisterns.  The open plains of central New South Wales are occupied by scattered agricultural communities and city-states, each of which defend larger areas of rangelands which they use for hunting and extraction of timber and other resources.

Bounded by the peaks of the Great Dividing Ranges and the Tasman Sea, the eastern coast of Australia is a narrow stretch of often rugged but well-watered land.  By Australian standards, the rainfall here is high; sufficient to support a great variety of plants which do not grow west of the mountains.  Several of these are spices which are traded further west; as far as the Murray kingdoms and the Yadji are concerned, this is the only feature of interest of the eastern seaboard.  A few additional crops have been domesticated here, including additional species of wattles, and a few fruits, but these are mostly unknown further west.  This region, stretching from East Gippsland in modern Victoria to southern Queensland, is inhabited by a variety of agricultural peoples.  The rugged nature of the terrain and the limitations of transport technology has prevented the development of large political entities in most of this region.  Most of the peoples here live in small farming communities which are usually separated into distinct valleys or coastal regions.

The introduction of better sailing technology from the Maori has seen the gradual development of seaborne trade routes linking these peoples, and while most of the peoples remain divided into small communities, a few reasonable sized kingdoms have emerged in some of the more open areas.  The most significant of these is that of the Patjimunra in the Hunter Valley, where the former city-states were formed into an established kingdom after the collapse of the Empire.  The Hunter Valley controls one of the best ways to cross the Great Dividing Range, and the Patjimunra have become wealthy through trade in spices.  The Patjimunra are a Gunnagalic-speaking people, but their culture and religion has evolved along a distinct path from those further west.  The kitjigal have developed into a rigid social hierarchy that defines all occupations and social contact.  The other major nation along the eastern coast is the Daluming kingdom, formed by the Bungudjimay around modern Coffs Harbour.  A non-Gunnagalic people who preserved their own way of life despite the Great Migrations, the Bungudjimay have religious beliefs and a social structure which is wholly alien to their neighbours, who consider them to be warlike, head-hunting savages.

Inland of the kingdom of Daluming lies the New England tablelands, an elevated region of high country with reasonably fertile soils and some of the best mineral wealth in Australia.  This region is one of the two main sources of tin in Australia, and although it has elevated terrain, its climate is still mild enough that red yams and other crops can grow here.  Politically, the New England tablelands are a confederation of several distinct peoples, who while they are sometimes wary of each other, are more concerned by the threat from Daluming to the east.

North of the New England tablelands, entering what is modern south-eastern Queensland, the agricultural population gradually diminishes.  These regions are nearing the effective growing limit of the red yam, which was for so long the main staple crop of all farming peoples on the continent.  Inland, the Darling Downs, a region of sweeping plains and open pastures, is covered by numerous small agricultural communities, but few large towns.

Around the coast, where drinking water is easier to obtain and seafood supplements the farming diet, the population density is higher.  The modern regions of the Gold Coast, Moreton Bay and the Sunshine Coast are the home of the Kiyungu, another society born in the Great Migrations, and who have adapted to life in the northern sun.  They are not very militaristic; the Empire never reached this far north, and they have no enemies worthy of the name.  The Kiyungu are happy enough to squabble amongst themselves, while mostly living for trade.  Their name for their own land translates as the Coral Coast.  This is something of a misnomer, since most of the coral reefs are further north, but the Kiyungu had long learned to voyage north in small boats and dive to collect corals.  This is a very valuable trade good which they exchange further south for tin and copper to supply them with bronze tools.  The Coral Coast is home to several decent-sized cities, and the Kiyungu have picked up on Maori sailing techniques to extend their own trade network about halfway up the Queensland coast.

Beyond the Kiyungu lands and the Darling Downs, northern Australia was until recently almost the exclusive domain of hunter-gatherers.  The Kiyungu maintained a few small fishing outposts and trading points along the coast, but otherwise farming and towns were non-existent.  In the last century and a half, though, new tropical crops emerged.  Kumara (sweet potato) and taro, brought across the seas by the strange Maori, first reached the Kiyungu around 1450 AD, and their cultivation has since spread inland.

Another new crop appeared in farmers fields about half a century before that; a new kind of yam.  It does not look quite like a regular red yam, it is smaller, and its roots are twisted.  No-one is quite sure where it came from, and it does not always grow well on its own, but farmers learnt to cultivate it through cuttings, and then later through seed.  This lesser yam does not yield as well as the common red yam, but it has one valuable quality; it can grow even in the northern fields where common yams wither [3].  The benefits are obvious, and farming has slowly spread further north.  Central Queensland is in the midst of a process of transformation.  Small agricultural communities have been established, but nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples have still not been completely displaced.  The only decent-sized towns are on the coast, where offshoots of the Kiyungu are slowly spreading out.  Farming peoples are on the advance once more, and absent outside influence, the northern migration will stop only at Cape York.  As of 1618, though, the northernmost coastal outpost is at Mackay, and farming inland has not even spread that far.

Much further to the south, Tasmania in 1618 remains divided between the descendants of the Tjunini and the Kurnawal.  Their long rivalry has divided much of the island between them, except for the spurned areas of the central highlands and south-western coast where the Palawa have developed a hunter-gardener lifestyle.  The territorial and cultural conflicts between the Tjunini and the Kurnawal has produced two states with clearly-defined borders and patrolled frontiers.  It has also meant that both peoples possess a strong sense of nationalism.  In their language, their culture, their fashion, and their diet, the inhabitants of Tasmania define themselves as citizens of either the Tjunini confederation or the Kurnawal kingdom.  It is often a mortal insult to suggest to a Tjunini that they act like or a Kurnawal, or vice versa.  Their rivalry is not just cultural, but over land and trade.  The best tin mines lie in the region of the disputed frontier, and the two nations have fought a seemingly endless series of wars over control of that region, and over other valuable agricultural land.  Tasmanian tin and gum cider are held in high regard on the mainland, although neither of the two nations conducts much in the way of direct trade.  The export of goods to and from the mainland is usually controlled by the Islanders.

In New Zealand, the Maori have benefitted immensely from the introduction of Australian domesticated crops and animals, although they also suffered from the arrival of blue-sleep and Marnitja, both of which have become endemic diseases.  The Maori have been transformed from a hunter-gardener people into a culture of warrior-farmers.  They have acquired knowledge of ceramics, writing, and metallurgy from Australia, and adapted them to suit their own culture.  The Maori are unfortunately limited in their metallurgy, because New Zealand has virtually no native sources of tin; all of their bronze must be imported from Australia, and this is almost prohibitively expensive.  Still, the fertile and well-watered lands of New Zealand support a much higher population density than virtually any part of Australia.  The Maori population is more highly-concentrated in the North Island, but farming has spread throughout both of the main islands.  The introduction of metal weapons and farming meant an increasing population and a long series of wars, which ended with consolidation into several major kingdoms in both of the main islands.  The Maori are linked to Australia by small-scale but regular trade contact, and by much less frequent contact with their old homelands in Polynesia.  Fortunately for the inhabitants of Polynesia, the travel time required, and the infrequency of those contacts, means that so far they have not been afflicted with Australian diseases.

--

[1] Some things seem to be unavoidable, alas.

[2] The Palawa are essentially the historical Tasmanian Aborigines.  The butterfly trap has meant that their languages and cultures are effectively unchanged until first contact with the colonisers from the mainland.

[3] The lesser yam is the product of a hybridisation between the red yam (Dioscorea chelidonius) and one of its close relatives, the long yam (Dioscorea transversa).  This hybridisation occurs occasionally whenever cultivated red yams are bred near wild long yams, which occurs in north-eastern New South Wales and southern Queensland.  Like both of their parents, the hybrid yams have a perennial root system and their stems and leaves die back every year.  The hybrid yams have tubers which are midway in size between the larger red yams and the smaller long yams, hence their name of “lesser yam.”  The first lesser yams are not interfertile with either of their parents, and since yams require both a male and female plant, were effectively sterile.  Australian farmers have learned to propagate yams through using cuttings, though, and this allows them to propagate the lesser yams.  Since hybrids show up on a fairly regular basis, this eventually means that they find strains of lesser yams which can fertilise each other and then be grown from seed.  As a crop, the lesser yam offers a lower yield than red yams, and is somewhat less drought-tolerant, but one of the characteristics it has inherited from its long yam parent is the capacity to grow in the tropics.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #12: Men of Blood and Iron

The south-western corner of Australia is a complex mixture of fertile coastal land gradually melding into an arid interior.  Around the coast, frequent rains fall, creating what is by Australian standards a well-watered climate.  Before European arrival, this land sustained forests of towering 90-metre karri trees, among the tallest trees in the world, and abundant jarrah trees, whose timber was so reminiscent of New World mahogany trees that European colonists would call it Swan River Mahogany.  Moving inland, the climate becomes gradually drier, although there is enough fertile land to produce half of modern Australia’s wheat harvest.  Moving even further inland, the wheat-producing regions gradually fade into more arid desert, although the dry interior contains abundant mineral resources, including large deposits of iron and nickel and a third of the world’s known gold reserves.  Although possessed of abundant resources, this region is extremely isolated from the rest of Australia; the state capital Perth is closer to Indonesia’s capital Jakarta than it is to the Australian national capital in Canberra.

In allohistorical Australia, the fertile south-western corner was for long isolated from the rest of the continent.  Although the climate was suitable for growing the native crop package, the separation of desert barriers meant that it took millennia for crops to be transported further west.  Fortunately for the peoples of the south-west, the isolation was not complete.  Traders and travellers sometimes crossed the deserts, and they brought food back with them.  Since any careful desert-crosser brings more food than they need, this sometimes meant that samples of domesticated crops reached south-western Australia.

From this source, farming slowly developed in the west.  Small-scale growing of red yams started around 550 BC, and other crops followed.  The Yuduwungu people around modern Esperance became the first farmers of the south-west, adopting red yams, bramble wattles, and native flax from the east.  Their isolation from the east remained quite substantial, enough that murnong, one of the key staple crops in eastern Australia, was not grown in the south-west until carried by Islander ships in the fifteenth century [1].  However, the Yuduwungu farmers developed some new crops of their own, such as the tooth-bearing wattle, manna wattle, warran yam, and bush potato [2].

Pre-farming south-western Australia was occupied by a group of eleven peoples who spoke related dialects and shared a common cultural heritage.  The Yuduwungu were just one of these peoples; collectively the eleven groups referred to themselves as the Yaora [3].  Eight of these peoples lived along the coast.  Moving clockwise, these were the Yuduwungu, the Wadjureb, the Pitelming, the Atjuntja, the Madujal, the Djarwari, the Inayaki and the Binyin.  Three other related peoples occupied the inland “wheat belt” regions; the Nyunjari, the Wurama and the Baiyurama.  Unlike in the east, where farmers displaced hunter-gatherers, amongst the Yaora, farming spread quickly enough that the individual peoples adopted crops and technologies rather than being displaced.  By about 300 AD, the eleven Yaora peoples had all taken up farming and sedentary lifestyles.

The Yaora peoples occupied an area which in terms of modern Australia comprises everything west of a line roughly from Geraldton to Esperance.  They called their home country Tiayal, meaning “the Middle Country.”  In their early religion and worldview, their homelands were the only important fertile country in the universe; to the south and west were endless seas and to the north and east were hostile desert wastelands.  They were only vaguely aware of any peoples beyond the Middle Country; trade routes to the north brought pearl shells from the northern coastline of Australia, while trade routes to the east had brought a few crops and decorative items, but with only very sporadic contact.

The isolation of the Middle Country meant that many of the fundamental elements of Gunnagalic civilization further east were only slowly transmitted to the western outlier.  Ceramics were spread relatively early, since storage jars and other containers were among the goods transported across the desert.  Domesticated ducks were brought directly across by a returning traveller (and cross-bred with their wild relatives), and this became inspiration for an independent domestication of the emu.  However, many other ideas and technologies did not spread until much later.  Sometimes this was to the detriment of the Yaora; knowledge of writing took a long time to spread across the desert.  Sometimes the slow transmission of knowledge would turn out to be to their advantage.  Nowhere would this be clearer than in metallurgy.

The basics of metallurgy were known to the Yuduwungu and other early Yaora peoples, but only in limited form.  They were broadly aware of the process of smelting metal, enough to create copper tools of their own.  Yet while they received a few bronze tools and weapons, these came through very long trade routes; the source of tin was not just across the desert, but at the other end of Gunnagalia.  This meant that the early Yaora peoples never learnt to recognise tin ore, and in any case they had only one source of tin (near modern Bunbury).  The developing Yaora civilizations knew how to smelt and work copper, but their only other metal tools were made from a metal which fell from the sky: meteoric iron.

In the end, this would be an inspiration.

--

In the traditional chronology of prehistory, technology progressed from the Stone Age (Neolithic) to a Copper Age (Chalcolithic), to a Bronze Age, and then finally to an Iron Age.  Each of these developments provided some advantages over the preceding age.  Copper tools gave more flexibility without replacing stone tools.  Bonze was a stronger and more useful metal than unalloyed copper, although it required higher smelting temperatures and a functioning trade network to supply tin.  Early ironworking techniques did not provide a stronger metal than bronze, but allowed for much more widespread use of metal; iron ore is much more abundant than the components of bronze, especially tin.

However, the historical record is more complex than a simple progression between ages.  Some cultures never went through a copper age, and some cultures did not go through a bronze-working period before they started working with iron (such as in West Africa).  It is still an open question as to whether a civilization needs to progress through bronze working before it develops ironworking techniques.  Sub-Saharan may well have developed ironworking independently without ever having a bronze-working period; sources disagree as to whether the West African ironsmiths learnt ironworking on their own or whether they were inspired directly or directly from ironworking in the region of present-day Sudan.  Ironworking in western Eurasia came later than bronze-working, but the techniques involved in Western ironworking (in bloomeries) are quite distinct from those used in bronze-working [4].  It seems that rather than being based on previous knowledge of bronze-working, early western Eurasian ironworking was an independent development.  Or, at the very least, it was based on indirect inspiration; the earliest west Eurasian blacksmiths may well have known that their neighbours heated and worked bronze, but did their own experimentation with iron and produced the first wrought iron [5].

The metalworkers in the Middle Country were in a similar situation with respect to the main metallurgists further east.  They knew enough about metal to know how to smelt it, but they did not know the full bronze-working techniques, and were forced to develop other methods.  Apart from copper, they had much rarer meteoric iron, which they could work into useful tools.  The techniques needed to work meteoric iron are exactly the same as those used to work iron once it has been created in a bloomery.  Meteoric iron was available in the Middle Country, but so were earthly forms of iron ore.  In particular, magnetite ore is abundant in several sources near Albany.  Magnetite ore is easily recognisable as being related to meteoric iron; lumps of magnetite have a close enough resemblance to meteorites that they can mislead meteorite hunters.  In time, smiths around Albany started to experiment with magnetite, and discovered techniques of burning it with charcoal, which gave them an abundant source of iron which they could work using already familiar techniques.  The Middle Country had entered the Iron Age.

--

With the spread of farming, the Yaora peoples developed into a distinctive cultural zone.  While they had some differences in speech – not all of their dialects were mutually intelligible – they remained in close contact with each other.  They shared the same broad religious beliefs, including a few concepts which were transmitted from the older Gunnagalic cultures further to the east.  These concepts had been changed considerably through travellers’ misunderstandings, the difficulties of translation, and the tyranny of distance.

To the Yaora, the universe comprises three “substances,” which can be broadly translated as solid, liquid, and gas.  All solid objects are only separate flavours of the underlying substance, and liquids and gases are similarly flavours of a separate underlying substance.  Each of these substances is mutable into each of the other forms, but through the actions of the universal symbol of eternity: water.  To the Yaora, water is the driver of the cycles of eternity, the physical manifestation of time.  They acquired the old Gunnagalic belief of the universe being eternal, but they adapted it into their observations of the properties of water.  The Yaora know that water can transform from solid to liquid to gas, even though their knowledge of solid water is limited to a few rare instances of snow and frost, and they think that clouds are formed of gaseous water, not liquid water drops.  The Yaora believe that the transformation of water between its three forms is what drives the movement of time and eternity.

The Yaora religion is based in part on their understanding of the role of water as an agent of erosion.  Living in a flood-prone land, they know how the actions of water can remove soil and stone.  They recognise sand as rocks which have been worn away from solid hills, and believe that this sand is in the process of being transformed into liquid over a very long time.  In their cosmology, the sun is viewed as the Source which drives the actions of water through evaporation from the oceans and precipitation when rain falls onto the land.  They also believe that the Source acts on solid rock, heating the water within it and causing it to expand, which means that hills gradually rise from the earth over time.  These hills are then eroded away by water, turned into part of the oceans, and then eventually solidify beneath the waves to be carried back to join the land.  All of this is viewed as part of the same underlying cycle of eternity; they believe that the world has always been and will always be.

The Yaora as a whole do not have a concept of a creator deity, although some of the individual peoples will later develop such views.  Instead, the Yaora believe in beings called kuru, a word which originally meant “reflection,” since kuru were thought of as reflections in the ever-ocean.  Kuru are not considered to be eternal beings in themselves; it is believed that they will eventually dissolve back into the ever-ocean.  Still, some of them have lifespans long enough that they may as well be immortal, from a human point of view.

Kuru are perceived as varying greatly in power; some are powerful and can be worshipped or appeased, whereas others are weak or mischievous and simply cause trouble for people.  Phenomena such as thunder and lightning are thought to be the actions of particularly transient kuru which are soon going to dissolve back into the ever-ocean.  Some kuru are associated with particular concepts such as growth, fertility or courage, and are called on for blessings or favours for people who are in need.  One quality which all kuru have in common is that they cannot stand directly in the light of the Source without being slowly weakened.  Greater kuru might be able to withstand sunlight for hours, while lesser kuru would be dissolved in seconds.  This means that all worship is conducted out of direct sunlight, whether indoors or just under trees or some other covering.

--

For centuries after the adoption of farming, the Yaora lived in small communities, and had no larger political entities than city-states.  Over time, a few of these developed into small kingdoms.  While they occasionally went conquering over large areas, none of them successfully held onto their conquests.

Things changed with the discovery of ironworking in the twelfth century.  Ironworking spread rapidly, with the new technology allowing much greater access to metal tools than anything in previous Australian history, even more than the abundant bronze of the Cider Isle.  Iron tools allowed more clearing of land and more effective farming techniques.  Iron weapons could be cheaply supplied to armies in a way which had never before been seen in the Middle Country.  The result was a rapid social and political transformation, particularly amongst the Atjuntja, the first people to work iron, and the ones who would put it to the greatest use.

Writing was unknown to the Atjuntja at the time when iron was discovered, so the early history of the Atjuntja conquerors was preserved only in oral form, and would not be transcribed until many years later, when memory had faded and exaggerations and distortions became commonplace.  It is known that the Atjuntja had long dwelt in the country around historical Albany, around the shores of King Georges Sound, which formed the largest deepwater harbour in the Middle Country.  They were divided into three main city-states: the White City [Albany], Warneang [Denmark] and Fog City [Walpole], along with several smaller towns and settlements.

The Atjuntja drew much of their food from fishing, while inland much of their country was covered in trees which were difficult to clear with copper and stone tools.  The Atjuntja were less numerous than many of their neighbours, until they discovered how to work the magnetite iron in their territory.  With iron tools, they started to clear the forests and plant yams and wattles to feed a burgeoning population.  Disputes over this land led to wars between the three main Atjuntja city-states, which were ended when King Banyar of the White City defeated both of his rivals and proclaimed himself the Kaat-kaat (King of Kings) of the Atjuntja.  His heirs would go on to conquer much further...

--

In 1618, the Atjuntja rule an empire which controls all of the Middle Country.  The Kings of Kings have even expanded further than the old Yaora lands.  The region around Geraldton is the northernmost area where large-scale agriculture is sustainable, but the rule of the Kings of Kings stretches further; they have a penal colony and salt-harvesting works on the shores of Shark Bay.  In the eastern frontier of their territory, they have pushed into the semi-arid region around Kalgoorlie.  The land there is poorly watered, but it holds something of great value: gold.  The Atjuntja esteem gold; they call it ‘sun’s blood’ and view it as the solid form of the Source.  The harsh environment of the desert does not make for long life amongst the miners, but the Kings of Kings care little for that.

Within this vast expanse of territory, the Atjuntja rule over everything, but not always directly.  The Atjuntja are only one people amongst many in their empire, by now the largest single ethnicity, but still a minority of the overall population.  The nature of their rule varies from region to region, reflecting both the duration of their rule in each region, and the form of its conquest.  The Atjuntja began their expansion in the thirteenth century, acquiring writing only when they conquered around the Wadjureb people around Ravensthorpe in the mid-fourteenth century, and completing their expansion with the conquest of Geraldton in 1512.  There is no longer any need for armies of conquest; the remaining military forces are used as garrisons to preserve the peace.

Rebellions are hardly an unknown occurrence, although they have been growing less frequent in the last half-century.  Their empire includes a patchwork of individual regions, some with explicit privileges established as part of their conquest, and some peoples who have been displaced entirely from their original homeland.  The general practice of the Kings of Kings has been to leave local institutions in place unless threatened by revolt.  Some peoples have been more accepting of Atjuntja rule than others.  The Pitelming rebelled one time too often and were forcibly deported from their homelands and resettled in small groups across the empire, except for those who were sent to the mines.  In some regions, the non-Atjuntja populations are gradually assimilating to the dominant culture; the prestige attached to the Atjuntja dialect means that many of the related dialects are being abandoned.  In other regions, the other Yaora peoples still remain attached to their own culture and heritage even if they are quiescent under Atjuntja rule.

Imperial administration is based on a combination of Atjuntja aristocrats and local potentates who have been integrated into the ruling class.  They have established a number of garrison-cities which serve both as bastions of imperial military power, and as centres of trade and administration.  Most of these garrison-cities have turned into local metropolises, with attached towns developing outside the walls of the main garrison.  Among the largest garrison-cities are Lobster Waters [Jurien Bay], Spear Mountain [Merredin] – where an ingeniously-built dam collects most of the water that falls on the mountain – Corram Yibbal [Bunbury], Archers Nest [Redcliffe, a suburb of Perth], and Red Eye [Ravensthorpe].  Trade focuses on these centres, and travels along the well-maintained roads which the Atjuntja have built between the garrison-cities.  This is the most extensive road network anywhere in allohistorical Australia, thanks to the use of iron tools which makes construction much easier.

From the garrison-cities, the imperial administrators oversee the collection of the yearly tribute from the subject peoples.  This is rigorously gathered, in a variety of forms depending on the region, imperial requirements, and the preferences of the subject peoples.  Some tribute is collected in local produce, such as dyes, timber, oils, incense, lorikeet and cockatoo feathers, copper, or iron.  Sometimes the tribute is collected in staple crops and foods, particularly to feed the garrison-cities and the imperial workforce.  Sometimes the tribute is collected in labour drafts.

The Atjuntja have developed a methodical system for managing labour and the workforce throughout their empire.  Most of this labour is used in public works and major engineering projects, such as roads, buildings, earthworks, and the like.  Most of the labourers are required to work only at certain times of the year.  This is usually in the winter and early spring, which coincides both with the least wearying part of the year for heavy labour, and with the timings of harvests.  After the yams have been harvested and the wattles pruned, and before it is time to replant them or collect the first wattle seeds, the imperial administrators demand the labour of tens of thousands of people for a fixed period of time.  These labour drafts are widespread, but permanent slavery is much rarer, used mostly for the gold mines in the interior.  For regular subjects, the labour draft is a wearying but predictable part of their yearly life.  While they may serve on a variety of projects, the single largest use of drafted labour is working in the imperial capital, the White City.

--

The White City, some call it, or the City Between The Waters, or the Place of Twin Peaks, or the Centre of Time.  Another history would call it Albany, the first deepwater port in Western Australia, located on a large mostly sheltered harbour called King Georges Sound, which contains two completely sheltered harbours inside, Princess Royal Harbour and Oyster Harbour.  To the Atjuntja who live in the White City, the Sound is simply the Sea Lake, and they call the two interior harbours West Water [Princess Royal] and North Water [Oyster].  It is the centre of their universe, the largest city in the known world, the dwelling place of the King of Kings.  Most of its residents would prefer never to live anywhere else; those who are appointed elsewhere as governors or soldiers treat it as an exile, no matter how important the duty.

The oldest part of the White City was founded between two mountains, the Twins, Un Koit [Mt Clarence] and Un Bennan [Mt Melville].  Strong walls once protected this city, but the walls have long since been torn down, their stone going to new buildings.  No foreign army has threatened the White City in over two centuries, and the inhabitants have many uses for building material.

The core of the White City is still in the land between the mountains, including most of the public buildings.  Many drafted labourers have worked over long years to produce the great monuments and public buildings of the White City, and their work continues.  Here, in the old heart of the White City is the Palace of a Thousand Rooms, for the private use of the King of Kings, his many wives, administrators, and honoured guests.  Here is the grandeur of the Walk of Kings, the great avenue which runs between the two mountains.  Most of the other public buildings adjoin the Walk of Kings: the Garden of Ten Thousand Steps is halfway along; the public temples to the Lord and the Lady are here, along with smaller shrines to a dozen well-known kuru; the public arena of the House of Pain is at the western end, with the private rooms built into the mountain; the House of the Songs adjoins the Walk, where the greatest of musicians in the Middle Country come to study their craft; and so does the Mammang, the great school where the sons of Atjuntja nobility come to receive military and religious schooling.

Everything about the heart of the White City is built to impress.  The Walk of Kings runs in a straight line between the two mountains, with fountains every hundred steps, towering jarrah trees planted to shade the walkers, and columns and statues to depict imperial accomplishments and religious figures.  The Garden of Ten Thousand Steps is where the Atjuntja indulge their love of the natural world.  It is said that with every step there is a new marvel to see, a new flower or tree [6], or a new arrangement of stones and trees, artificial waterfalls, or flocks of sacred ducks bred for bright colours.  Disturbing the ducks is punishable by eventual death.  Everywhere in the Garden is the sound of water, flowing, bubbling, or cascading down rocks.

At the eastern end of the Walk is the Palace.  Most of it is private, but at the appropriate season visitors can walk up the limestone steps, past statues of cockatoos, lorikeets, and goannas carved so that they appear to be about to jump into the air.  At the top, there is a large covered balcony where the King of Kings sits to watch public events.  He sits on the Petal Throne, symbolic of the Atjuntja veneration of all flowering plants, which has been carved in a shape of forty petals opening as if part of a very large flower.

The grandeur of the public buildings is what most visitors to the White City remember, but this is a much larger city.  The outlying districts extend much further than the old heartland, filled with houses and markets, storehouses, smaller shrines, and the three schools for common Atjuntja men, women, and foreigners.  Two hundred thousand people live here at the busiest times of the year, although many of those are drafted labourers who return to their homes outside of draft times.  The storehouses are full of the wattleseeds and yams needed to feed the burgeoning population, and the main imperial roads are always busy with traffic bringing in food, other tribute, and trade goods.  The people, the gardens and the fountains are watered by several aqueducts which come from the mountain ranges to the north [7].

The White City includes a foreign quarter, built on the eastern side of North Water, to keep outlanders and their influences away from the royal city.  This is where Islander ships and merchants visit in regular fleets, and a few of them have settled permanently.  They have their own small temples where they complete the rituals of the Sevenfold Path in accordance with the teachings of the Good Man, but strictly-enforced imperial law forbids them from proselytising within the White City.

--

As a ruling class, the Atjuntja are divided into noble families and commoners, although even common Atjuntja are believed to outrank all but the most favoured of subject peoples.  Governors and military commanders are chosen exclusively from the Atjuntja aristocracy, although there are protocols whereby high-status nobility from the subject peoples can be adopted into the Atjuntja ruling class.  This adoption is subject to acceptance of Atjuntja ways, including learning their dialect and adopting a proper mode of dress and appearance.  The most visible mark of this acceptance is the full beard which all Atjuntja men are expected to wear; a man’s beard is regarded as a sign of strength and virility.

The Atjuntja system of nobility includes a variety of ranks and offices, the highest of which can be roughly translated as “king.”  In keeping with long-standing tradition, the heads of the thirteen greatest noble families are accorded that title.  Each of them is officially a king of a particular place, such as the other ancient Atjuntja city-states of Warneang and Fog City, or the newer garrison-cities.  The link of these titles to geographic locations has long since been broken; the leading members of the nobility prefer to live in civilization in the White City and let lesser family members deal with the bothersome business of administration.  In any case, governors to the garrison-cities are appointed by the reigning emperor without any regard to which noble family claims the royal title for that city.

Overseeing the whole empire is the emperor, the King of Kings, the Voice of Divinity.  The emperor is chosen from among the members of the imperial family, and in theory each King of Kings is confirmed (elected) by the kings of the noble families.  In practice most emperors have appointed their own successor from amongst their sons or other kin, and the kings have simply acclaimed the new monarch.  In a few cases of disputed succession, or where the King of Kings has died without an appointed heir, the decision of the kings has mattered.

The protocol surrounding the King of Kings is elaborate, based on his divine status.  The title of Voice of Divinity is no mere formality, but given in recognition of this status.  Only those who are “blessed” are permitted to hear the Voice speak; this naturally includes the nobility of all ranks, and palace servants and the like, but otherwise is a rare honour bestowed on those who have performed exceptional service to the empire.  Apart from this, people may come in audience before the Voice, or the army may march past his balcony while he sits on the Petal Throne, but they do not hear his voice.  The Voice uses a range of gestures to indicate his intent, with meanings such as “tell me more,” “you have done well,” and “you may leave me.”  A few Voices have developed their own forms of sign language and use an interpreter to convey more precise meanings, although most Voices have thought that commoners have little to say that is worth hearing.

In 1618, the imperial dignity is held by a man named Kepiuc Tjaanuc.  He is the Voice of Divinity, but to be honest, the blessed often wish that they did not have that status, so that they would not have to hear him speak.  He can talk, can the Voice.  Too many bright ideas, too many questions, and too many whims for the nobles to feel comfortable hearing him speak.  Not to mention too many wives.  There is no restriction on the number of wives which a man of noble blood can take – commoners are permitted a maximum of three, of course, and then only if they can pay for a separate house for each wife – but the Voice married his 101st wife last winter solstice, far more than any other nobleman in living memory.  Some less charitable gossip, carefully repeated out of the ears of any untrustworthy listeners, is that the Voice can no longer remember how to do anything with his wives other than talk to them; certainly, he has not fathered as many sons as would be expected for a man with so many wives.  Perhaps he only married them so that they have to listen to him.

--

Writing is not a native concept for the Atjuntja, but something which they acquired in the process of expanding their dominions.  The first people in the Middle Country to develop writing were the Yuduwungu, who acquired it by stimulus-diffusion from across the desert.  While direct contact with the east was limited, some trade flowed across the desert.  This included a variety of decorative objects such as pendants and bracelets which were inscribed with messages.  Some of the containers for trade goods had labels of their contents.  Travellers to the east rarely learned writing themselves; literacy in the Gunnagalic script took years to acquire, due to its complexity.  Still, they were aware of the existence of writing, and their tales percolated throughout the Yuduwungu lands.

In the eleventh century, a Yuduwungu artisan named Nuneloc developed a writing system based on what he had heard of the system to the east, and using examples which he had available.  Many of the symbols which he used were borrowed from the Gunnagalic script, but used for completely different sounds, and some of the symbols were invented outright [8].  The script was fundamentally syllabic, although also proto-alphabetic because related signs were used for syllables with the same initial consonants but different vowels.  Nuneloc had his name immortalised, since it became the root of the Yuduwungu word for writing, and which in time would be passed on to the Atjuntja.

By the time the Atjuntja started conquering, writing had spread as far as the neighbouring Wadjureb people.  The Atjuntja adopted the system of writing, finding it extremely useful in maintaining their empire, but its use is limited to preferred purposes.  They keep some religious texts and have some of their epic poems and songs written down.  They keep detailed records to support their administration of the empire, included lists of tribute collected from each region, the number of people present, and so on.  The last Atjuntja census revealed just over 1.75 million people live under the rule of the King of Kings.  They have public inscriptions announcing the glory of their rulers, but even then they rely as much on the carvings and sculpture as on the content of the inscriptions.  For the Atjuntja like everything to be a spectacle or festival.  Ideally both.  Sports, military parades and triumphs, and celebrations of the harvests are all conducted in the most ostentatious manner possible.

As are religious experiences.

--

The Atjuntja share the same ancestral religion as all the Yaora peoples, but their beliefs have evolved into an overarching dualism.  They believe in the same kuru and water-cycles as their kin, but they also worship two divine beings, whose names translate roughly as the Lord and the Lady.  Theological interpretations differ (sometimes violently) as to the underlying nature of these beings.  One school of thought can be approximately translated as literalists; its adherents consider the Lord and the Lady to be literal beings which have a tangible existence, personalities and so forth.  The other main school of religious thought can be roughly translated as abstractionists; they hold that that the designations Lord and Lady are merely a convenient shorthand for what are underlying principles and basic nature of the universe itself.

Regardless of which theological viewpoint individual Atjuntja hold – and the last four Kings of Kings have been careful never to take an official position on the matter – the consequences of these beliefs are similar.  The Lady is given a number of titles to represent her essential nature: She Who Creates, the Lady of Goodness, the Patron of Beauty, the Giver of Wisdom, the Incarnator.  The Lord is given a corresponding set of titles: He Who Destroys, the Lord of Evil, the Unmaker, the Bringer of Pain, the Harvester of Souls.  The Atjuntja believe that the two deities (or principles) act in dynamic unison over the course of eternity.  Both are necessary; goodness cannot exist without evil to define it.  All that is created will eventually be destroyed; from the shards of what has been destroyed, new things will be remade.

Worship of the Lord and Lady takes many forms, most of them public and ostentatious.  Yet the rituals which make the most vivid impression on outside visitors are those associated with some of the more negative aspects of the Lord.  Visiting Islanders and other occasional Eastern guests are disgusted by them; later European visitors will be similarly appalled.

In Atjuntja theology, a certain amount of misery, pain and death are demanded by the Lord.  It is unavoidable, either as part of His wishes (according to literalists) or a fundamental aspect of the universe (according to abstractionists).  Since misery, pain and death cannot be prevented, it is best to arrange for them to happen in a form which minimises the effects on the world.  Better to inflict pain in a carefully-controlled manner than to leave it to run wild throughout the Middle Country; better to appease the Lord with appropriate ritual torture and bloodletting rather than to allow death to strike where it wishes.

The rituals involved with these aspects of the worship of the Lord are conducted in a building whose formal name translates as the House of Absolution, but which is colloquially and more widely known as the House of Pain.  Its priests are titled Appeasers.  The House includes both public and private sections, including one large public arena where the major rituals are conducted.  The arena can seat over twenty thousand, and it is regularly filled by people who have come to bear witness.

The House hosts two main kinds of rituals, the sacrifices conducted by the Appeasers themselves, and blood bouts performed entirely by guests.  The sacrifices are conducted using a variety of techniques which are best not described too closely, but which fall into two basic classes, “to the pain” or “to the death.”  In either case, the Appeasers work as slowly as possible, gradually increasing the intensity of their efforts.  When a person is sacrificed to the pain, the ritual will continue until they signal for it to stop; a sacrifice to the death is self-explanatory.

Sacrificial victims are all volunteers.  In theory, at least.  The Atjuntja hold that a sacrifice from a person of noble blood is far more effective at appeasing the Lord than that of a commoner.  A certain number of members of each noble family are sacrificed to the pain every year.  The longer the sacrifice continues without the victim calling it to a halt, the more efficacious it is judged to be.  Human nature being what it is, the noble families compete with each other to win the greatest spiritual rewards – to say nothing of public acclaim and honour – by how long their children can last in the sacrifice.  Stoic endurance is deemed a major virtue, since there is no better method to appease the Lord.  The Appeasers are rarely short of volunteers, both from noble and common stock.

Sacrifices to the death are rarer; in a normal year the standard number is thirteen.  In bad years, such as those afflicted by diseases or extended droughts, it is common for the King of Kings to request more volunteers.  Such requests are usually honoured; a large part of a region’s annual tribute can be in the form of people to be sacrificed to the death.  However, this is one instance where the imperial administrators will never demand tribute in this form; such offers must always come from the individuals concerned.  This is not out of any sense of squeamishness or even out of any fear of alienating their subjects, but simply a result of their religious beliefs.  A forced sacrifice will not appease the Lord; if anything, it will simply invite His attention and risk Him taking a more direct hand in worldly affairs.

Or so commoners and subject peoples believe, at any rate.  Many of the upper classes have fewer scruples when it comes to their own kin.  It is not unknown for less favoured members of a noble family to volunteer to take the ultimate sacrifice.  Even the royal family are not above such requests; being a surplus prince is not an indicator of a long life expectancy.

The other form of religious ritual in the House of Pain is the blood bout.  This is a contest between (usually) two volunteers, fought with the objective of inflicting pain, loss of blood, and eventual death.  Volunteers for these bouts are usually from the lower classes; most noble families prefer to win honour through sacrifices instead.  Blood bouts are usually held only once a year, as part of broader religious ceremonies involved with the start of the new year.  Blood bouts are fought using a number of stylised weapons, or (rarely) bare-fisted.  Armour is not permitted, beyond basic clothing for modesty.  Weapons are designed to make it difficult to inflict a single killing blow.  The blood battlers are expected to kill slowly; the most favoured contest is one where the loser dies from slowly bleeding through a large number of small cuts.  It is quite common for both contestants to die in a blood bout, although some particularly gifted duellists have survived bouts for several successive years.

--

The House of Pain will attract most early attention when Europeans first discover about Atjuntja religion.  Still, the Atjuntja beliefs are far more complex than this, a combination of their own special interests and older traditions which have been subsumed into their theology.  One older belief which has become integral to Atjuntja religion is their study of the heavens.  Several Yaora peoples interpreted the constellations and other heavenly bodies in terms of movements in the great water-cycles, and believed that a proper study of celestial events would yield detailed knowledge of signs and omens to guide the decisions of men.  Of the various groups who held these beliefs, none would take them further than the Yuduwungu.

Before the invention of writing, Yuduwungu astrologers established an observation point far inland.  They chose a plateau which they called the Heights of Heaven, although it would later come to be called Star Hill [Boorabin].  From this inland vantage, they had much clearer skies to watch the heavens and study the signs and omens.  They established a tradition of picking the keenest-sighted people in the land and sending them to Star Hill to become apprentices to study the craft of astrology.  The astrologers of Star Hill became dedicated to studying the heavens, and built up a detailed oral system which described the known constellations, stars, planets, and some records of meteors and comets.  The sect became known as the Watchers, and the Yuduwungu gave them the same veneration which classical Greeks would give the Oracle of Delphi.

When Nuneloc developed his script, it did not take long for the practice to spread to the Watchers.  They added their own system of signs for numbers, and transferred their oral knowledge into written form.  The Watchers began to keep a very detailed record of constellations, stellar movements, and new celestial bodies such as comets, novas, and the like.  Living in a plateau in the desert, with clear skies and no distractions, they became very good at watching.  With much time for contemplation, they discovered a variety of astronomical truths, although these were wrapped up in astrological terms and incorporated into their system of predictions.  When the Atjuntja conquerors came, they did not interfere with the Watchers; indeed, several of the Kings of Kings have allocated labour to construct expanded buildings for the Watchers.

Over the centuries, the Watchers have accumulated a detailed body of astronomical knowledge.  They have very thorough records of the constellations and individual star, and their observers are astute enough to have recognised the precession of the equinoxes over the five and a half centuries in which they have been keeping records.  They have a detailed record of every comet, solar and lunar eclipse which has been visible above the Middle Country since 1076, except for a twenty-year gap between 1148-1168 where several records were lost due to flooding.  They keep a calendar of meteor showers, and have recognised most (but not all) novae which have been visible since their records began.

In common with European and other astronomers, they know of the supernova which occurred in 1604; brighter than any other celestial body apart from the Moon and Venus [9].  The Watchers are still arguing over exactly what that new star meant, although most of them agree that it was ominous.  On their advice, the then-King of Kings requested fifty volunteers to be sacrificed to the death in 1605, to appease the threat contained in this new sign in the heavens.  They are aware that the world is round, although they have no particular interest in calculating its size.  Their star catalogues and their dedicated observations have allowed them to recognise Uranus, which they include in their list of wandering stars (i.e. planets).

In short, if European astronomers gain access to the Watchers’ records, they will find much to interest them.

--

[1] The crops which are brought overland across the desert are only those which travellers would bring them, and which would survive replanting.  Red yam tubers were often taken back by traders, since they were a large and valuable source of food.  Red yams are also useful since they do not need to be planted intact; like other Australian yam species, only the top part of the tuber needs to be planted in the soil to regrow.  Western Australian peoples already knew how to harvest and replant a local yam species (the warran yam), although they had not fully domesticated it.  Travellers who brought red yams back with them to the west would cut slices off a yam tuber as they travelled, using it as food.  If the top part of the yam tuber survived the trip, they would sometimes replant it.  With their familiarity with harvesting warran yams, this meant that they could apply those techniques to a new crop which was more suitable for full domestication.

The other crops which were brought over were seed crops (wattle seeds, flax seeds), which traders also brought with them as food.  Seed crops were ground into flour and cooked as seedcakes, much as Aboriginal peoples did in historical Australia.  Since the seeds were not ground until they were used, this mean that surplus seeds were also available for replanting if they were brought back west.  Some other eastern crops were not suitable for transport in this manner; the tubers of murnong are too small to be useful to bring back intact, and the seeds of nettles were not harvested.

[2] The tooth-bearing wattle (Acacia dentifera) is a small shrub which provides a large seed yield for its size, and manna wattle (A. microbotrya) produces abundant quantities of wattle gum.  The warran yam (Dioscorea hastifolia) is a real yam species which was historically used by the Noongar and other peoples of south-western Australia.  Warran yams were harvested with the upper part of the tuber being replanted to allow it to regrow and collect a fresh tuber the next year.  Warran yams are not quite as well-suited to arid conditions as red yams, and do not provide as large yields per acre, although their taste will be preferred by some Yaora peoples.  Australia includes a large number of plants which have been called “bush potatoes”; the species described here is Platysace deflexa, whose potential as a domesticable crop is being explored in recent plantings.  The main role of the warran yam and bush potato is as secondary staple crops which do not yield as heavily in nutritional terms as red yams, but add variety to the diet, and offer some security for food supply if disease or other misfortune affects the red yam harvest.

[3] Historically, most of the fertile regions of south-western Australia were similarly occupied by a group of thirteen related peoples who broadly considered themselves part of the same culture.  They collectively called themselves the Noongar (although the name is transliterated into English in a variety of other spellings), and spoke related dialects (or related languages, depending on who you ask).  The Noongar did not occupy an area quite as large as the allohistorical Yaora; the borders of their country were roughly everything south and west of a line from Jurien Bay to Ravensthorpe, Western Australia.

[4] Early bronze-working involved smelting of copper and tin, alloying those metals, and then casting them into tools or weapons.  Early ironworking in bloomeries did not involve melting iron ore.  Instead, it involved burning iron ore with charcoal so that the iron ore was reduced to iron without ever reaching its melting temperature, and then working the iron while it was heated, but still solid.

[5] Chinese ironworking techniques were quite distinct; they developed the blast furnace much earlier than in western Eurasia, and melted iron ore until it formed into cast iron.

[6] South-western Australia is a region of substantial biodiversity, with over seven thousand species of vascular plants.  The Atjuntja don’t have every one of those kinds of plants in the Garden, but they give it their best shot.

[7] Two mountain ranges, the Stirling Range and Porongurup Range, north of modern Albany, are the source of the water for these aqueducts.

[8] There are historical instances of writing being developed in a similar method.  The Cherokee writing system was invented by a similar method, and it appears that Scandinavian runes were similarly inspired by contact with the Latin alphabet.

[9] Northern hemisphere astronomers also recorded another supernova a generation before in 1572, but this was in the northern hemisphere constellation of Cassiopeia and could not be seen from where the Watchers operate.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #13: Tales Of The Cider Isle

There is a land, the land of bronze, the land of mist, the land of courage, where valiant Tjunini soldiers battle endlessly with crafty Kurnawal warriors, where the wild men still lurk in the highlands, raiding where they may, and where in the long winter evenings honourable men gather to feast around roaring fireplaces, drink endless goblets of gum cider, and hear the bards recite the endless verses of the Song of the Princess, and even the smallest boy can recite the names of every captain who led men into that war, while in the courts of cunning kings, poets compete with each other to create ever more complex verses packed with allusions and circumlocutions which only the most learned of listeners can fully grasp...

--

The island which another history would call Tasmania held what was for a very long time the most isolated human society on the globe.  First settled tens of thousands of years ago when the seas were lower, the inhabitants of that distant land easily walked there.  When the ice melted, sea levels rose and flooded what would now never be called Bass Strait, and the inhabitants of this southerly island were trapped in isolation.  Although their distant ancestors had used boats or rafts to cross the seas and reach Australia, the inhabitants of Tasmania had lost those skills.  For ten millennia these people, who called themselves the Palawa, lived in complete isolation from the rest of humanity.

The island which the Palawa call home is a cold and wet land, by the standards of mainland Australia.  Much of it is rugged and covered in forests, although there are substantial flat and fertile areas, mostly on the northern and eastern coasts.  Lying in the midst of the Roaring Forties, the island is often wind-swept, particularly the western coast.  The rugged terrain conceals a wealth of mineral resources for those who have the knowledge to exploit them: gold, tin, copper, zinc, and iron.  The few thousand Palawa [1] who live on the island do not have that knowledge; with a small population and no suitable plants to develop indigenous agriculture, they remain in a hunter-gatherer existence.

--

The waters of Bass Strait are shallow and treacherous, filled with reefs and submerged rocks which hinder navigation.  Strong currents move both east and west, and the fury of the Roaring Forties creates frequent storms and wind-driven waves.  In a different history, Bass Strait would be notorious for the hundreds of shipwrecks on its islands or along its shores.

For the Gunnagalic peoples who lived along the northern shores of the Strait, the island beyond the wild waters for so long might as well have been on the far side of the moon.  The various peoples who lived along the northern shores – Tjunini around the Otways, Giratji around Port Philip Bay, and Kurnawal to the east – did know how to build some ships, but their techniques were primitive.  Their seagoing boats were mostly small, single-masted vessels built from wooden planks and held together with dowels.  In these boats, they carefully fished the coastal waters, always wary for any potential storms, and rarely venturing out of sight of land.  At times these vessels would be blown out to sea, where the sailors were often wrecked or drowned.  On a few rare occasions a ship would land on Tasmania itself, where the crew would be killed by the local Palawa, sometimes be accepted into a local band, or otherwise starve to death in a land where they no longer knew how to hunt.

The long isolation of Tasmania might have continued until contact with the outside world, if not for the islands which lie in the midst of the Strait.  The shallow waters of the Strait contain a great many small islands and semi-submerged rocks which are hazardous to shipping, but they also contain some larger islands which can sustain human habitation.  The largest of these are King Island off the northwest coast of Tasmania, and Flinders Island off the northeast coast.  Both of these islands had held human populations in the distant past, but these had died out.

In the late eighth century, a pair of Kurnawal fishing boats were swept out to sea, as so many had before them.  Unlike so many of their predecessors, these boats were not sunk or wrecked on the shores, but made a safe landing on the eastern side of Flinders Island.  Here they found an empty land with no signs of human habitation, but which abounded with natural resources.  In particular, they found large breeding populations of fur seals and elephant seals.  Seal colonies had been largely hunted out on the mainland, for they offered an attractive source of meat, pelts, fur, and seal oil.  The crews of these fishing boats killed a few seals, collected their pelts and meat, and tried to sail home.  Again, unlike many of their predecessors, they successfully returned to the mainland, with news of islands and seals.

News of the seal-filled island to the south caused a considerable stir amongst the Gunnagalic peoples.  Their navigation techniques were not advanced, and the waters of the Strait were always risky.  Still, they could recognise general directions from the movement of the sun, and seal hunting offered a considerable source of wealth for those who braved the waters.  Over the next few decades, Kurnawal sealers colonised Flinders Island, while further west Tjunini sealers did the same on King Island.

With their colonies so close, and with several smaller seal-filled islands in between to encourage exploration, sealers did not take long to discover Tasmania itself.  The long rivalry between Tjunini and Kurnawal means that both of them claim that they were the first to discover the Big Island.  As such, no date can be firmly established, and the margins of error of radiometric dating meant that later archaeologists would never definitively settle the question.  Still, it is certain that sometime in the early ninth century AD, Tjunini and Kurnawal both made landfall on Tasmania itself.  The Palawa’s ten millennia of isolation had come to an end.

--

The Tjunini established their first permanent settlement on Tasmania at modern Stanley, on the north-west coast.  Here, they found an imposing natural feature: a flat-topped circular headland which seemed to grow straight out of the sea, seemingly defying the power of wind and wave [2].  On the sheltered southern side of the headland lies a useful port.  The first Tjunini sailors to see this head called it Hope Hill, and built their first mainland town just to the south.

From their base at Hope Hill, Tjunini sealers started to explore both Tasmania’s shores.  Going west, they found only rugged coastline along Tasmania’s western coast; good for harvesting seals, sometimes, but not for much else.  To the east, they found Tasmania’s northern coast to be relatively flat and fertile.  To them this was bountiful empty land, only thinly-populated by hunter-gatherer Palawa.

To the Tjunini, the northern coast of Tasmania was an attractive target for colonisation.  It was only slightly colder than their homeland, and its apparent emptiness was a welcome feature.  Yet the most appealling feature of Tasmania was its distance from the mainland and the Empire who ruled there.  The Tjunini homeland had been recently conquered by Watjubaga’s armies, and many amongst the Tjunini resented imperial rule.  For those brave enough to sail across the Strait, they could build new lives in a land untouched by imperial influence.

The lure of new lands proved to be a strong one.  Over the course of the ninth and early tenth centuries, more than twenty thousand Tjunini crossed the Strait to permanently settle in Tasmania.  The migration was substantial enough that the Tjunini on the mainland would disappear as a separate people over the next few centuries, having become few enough in number that they were absorbed into their neighbours.

On the Big Island, though, the Tjunini flourished.  Most of their early settlements were on the coast, where they could rely on fishing or sealing for part of their food.  Some of these early settlements would grow into significant cities; the largest of these were Kwamania [Smithton], Mulaka Nayri [Wynyard], and Mukanuyina [Devonport].

From these early cities, the Tjunini started to settle inland, and push further east.  They did not encounter any significant opposition from the indigenous peoples; outnumbered almost from the beginning, some Palawa were assimilated into the Tjunini, and the rest pushed back into the rugged interior.  Nor did the Empire ever offer a credible threat to the Tjunini expansion.  The first real threat to the Tjunini came when they pushed far enough east to encounter the Kurnawal.

--

The Kurnawal settlement of Tasmania began near-simultaneously with that of the Tjunini.  Like their western neighbours, the Kurnawal had first settled an offshore island, then found a convenient port on the mainland of Tasmania which was first used as a sealing base.  For the Kurnawal, this was Dawn Dunes [Bridport].  From here, Kurnawal sealers charted the coast of northern and eastern Tasmania.  They established another early settlement at Orange Rock [St Helens].  Unlike the Tjunini, the Kurnawal moved inland relatively quickly.  Inland from Dawn Dunes, they found a place where the soils were so rich that yams grew larger than anywhere they had heard of.  This place they called Bountiful [Scottsdale], and it quickly grew into the largest Kurnawal town in Tasmania [3].

However, while the Tjunini had crossed the Strait in their thousands to flee imperial expansion, the mainland Kurnawal were not yet under threat.  The apparent emptiness of Tasmania did attract some settlers, but it was not the main driver for Kurnawal migrations.  It would take another discovery to lure large numbers of Kurnawal settlers across the Strait.

--

The north-east of Tasmania contains many ancient granite mountains, worn down by rain and wind into rugged terrain.  Many of the rocks worn down by ages of rain have been carried into river beds, which over the aeons have formed immensely thick alluvial deposits.  Kurnawal explorers who travelled along the north-eastern rivers recognised several minerals in the beds, including one which would prove an irresistible lure: tin.

Although the early Kurnawal did not know it, the granite in the mountains they climbed over had rich concentrations of cassiterite (tin ore).  Mining the granite itself would have been difficult, but millions of years of erosion had broken down the granite and washed large concentrations of cassiterite into the river beds.  The Kurnawal easily recognised cassiterite; similar ores had been carried to their mainland homes from the trade routes.

To the Kurnawal, the alluvial cassiterite deposits offered a source of wealth which made seal-hunting seem trivial.  Although essential for forming bronze, tin was a rare metal.  At the time, the only significant source for Gunnagalic peoples came from far-off New England, in northern New South Wales.  Some of it did come south along the trade routes, but it was very expensive.  The promise of tin-based wealth brought several thousand Kurnawal across the Strait to settle in Tasmania.  Unlike the Tjunini, though, the mainland Kurnawal did not migrate en masse to the Big Island; the majority of them remained in their home country.

--

The early history of the Tjunini and Kurnawal settlers on Tasmania is shrouded in mystery.  In large part, this is because it is prehistory, not history.  Writing was unknown in the Kurnawal homeland at the time that the first settlers crossed the Strait, and it was only barely known amongst the Tjunini, who regarded it as a tool of imperial conquest and bureaucracy, and wanted no part of it.  Archaeology can reveal only glimpses of those early days, and oral history has been overlaid by many embellishments and biases.

From what can be sifted from myths and legends, it seems that Tjunini and Kurnawal settlers on Tasmania had some clashes with each other even during the early days of colonisation, but these did not develop into full-scale war for more than a century.  In the early days, both peoples lacked the population to support a major war, and considerable distance separated their main settlements.  The two peoples were never fond of each other, but they appear to have tolerated each others’ existence for a time.

By the mid-eleventh century, the Tjunini and Kurnawal had both grown considerably in population.  The Tjunini were the more numerous people, and were well-established along the north-west coast; later archaeologists will excavate quite a few large settlements.  They were a people without political unity; each of their cities had its own king.  Mukanuyina was the most populous city, with Kwamania and Mulaka Nayri roughly equal second, while six other cities also had monarchs who claimed descent from the Rainbow Serpent.

The Kurnawal had never received the same number of immigrants from the mainland, but they still had a substantial presence in the north-east coast.  By far their most important city was Bountiful.  The rich soils supported its large population, and the city marked one end of the Tin Trail which ran through the mountains to Orange Rock on the east coast [4].  Orange Rock was their second most populous city, with ancient Dawn Dunes a distant third, and there were a few other small towns further south along the east coast.

The boundary line between the two peoples was for a long time the Tamar River, which is in fact a 70 kilometre estuary.  Later Kurnawal sagas claim that the Tjunini kept crossing the river to steal their land for farming; Tjunini songs speak of furtive Kurnawal sneaking across the Tamar on winter nights to raid and steal what they could.  While the truth of these accounts is open to dispute, it is clear that the two peoples were becoming more hostile.  The stage was set for a series of events which would be immortalised in song.

--

What happened in Tasmania in the turbulent decades of 1060-1080?  The short and unhelpful answer is: a war.  The long-enduring tensions between Tjunini and Kurnawal came to crisis point during this time, and led to a war which the Tjunini won and the Kurnawal lost.  That much can be known, at least with as much certainty as anything is known about history.  Beyond that, well...

About a century after the events of that troubled time, a bard named Tjiganeng took the existing tales and verses and wove them into song.  Into a very long song.  If written out (which it later would be), it ran to over 25,000 lines in the alternating twelve and ten syllable patterns of Tjunini verse.  As far as is known, Tjiganeng gave his song no title, referring to it simply as “My Song.”  Some later Tjunini would give it that name, but it was most popularly called the Song of the Princess.  It told the tale of the War of the Princess, a war which raged for twelve years, and which rearranged the political and cultural borders of the Big Island.

The War of the Princess was undoubtedly a real war; archaeology has confirmed the destruction of Bountiful which was the central event depicted in the Song.  Still, for all that memorising the Song became fundamental for the training of all later bards, the historical accuracy of the events it depicts are open to considerable dispute.  Some historians think that the gist is accurate, but many details were invented.  Some think that only the names of the central characters are accurate, and that almost everything else was artistic licence.

Still, with all the appropriate caveats, the Song records a reasonably credible account of a war.  It describes how the Tjunini kings had long fought amongst themselves as much as they fought the Kurnawal, until King Tiyuratina of Mukanuyina established a loose confederation.  All the other kings became vassals who could not make war except with his permission.  Tiyuratina took the title of Nine-Fold King.

According to the Song, Tiyuratina sought peace with the raiding Kurnawal, and so offered a pact of eternal friendship.  This was to be sealed by a dual marriage, with Tiyuratina’s son Mulaka to marry the daughter of the Kurnawal monarch, while in turn the Kurnawal monarch’s son married Tiyuratina’s daughter, Lutana.  The Kurnawal king, Anguma, agreed with the peace pact, until the appearance of a brilliant comet the night before the dual wedding, which he interpreted as an unfavourable omen [4].  Haunted by this omen, Anguma betrayed the pact by dressing a servant Palawa girl as his daughter during the double wedding.  The subterfuge was not discovered until after the dual marriage was completed.  Anguma insisted that despite the deception, Lutana was now his son’s lawful wife.  Tiyuratina refused to break the oaths of safe-conduct which he had sworn, and so watched his only daughter carried off to Bountiful where she would be both wife and hostage.

When he returned home, Tiyuratina had the fake princess killed then dismembered, sending parts of her body to each vassal city, calling on them to avenge the honour of the Tjunini.  Each king brought their armies, and they began a campaign to release the princess and drive the Kurnawal from the Big Island.  The Song lists each of the captains of the army, and names several heroes who were to play leading parts in the war.  After several battles which are mostly glossed over in the Song, the Tjunini armies reached Bountiful and besieged it.  The granite walls held off every attack from the Tjunini armies for seven years, with many clashes of heroes along the way, while the besieged Kurnawal waited for help from their mainland cousins which never came.

Bountiful eventually fell when a Tjunini hero known only by his nickname of the Wombat dug beneath the granite walls and made a section collapse at a well-timed moment.  The besiegers on the surface were already attacking, and used the breach in the walls to capture the city.  Many heroes on both sides died during this final battle, which ended with the burning of Bountiful and the massacre of most of its inhabitants.  Princess Lutana was returned to her father, but Anguma escaped.  Tiyuratina vowed that the war should continue until the Kurnawal king was dead and his people driven into the sea.  His vassal kings refused to honour his vow, saying that they had come at his calling to ensure that his daughter was returned, and that had been accomplished.

Tiyuratina continued the war with only his own forces and those of a few captains who remained loyal.  He divided his armies in half, taking personal command of the forces sent to Dawn Dunes in case Anguma had fled there.  The Wombat led the other half east through the mountains until they reached Orange Rock.  In Dawn Dunes, Tiyuratina fought his way into the city and met Anguma’s son, where they fought a duel where both of them slew the other.  On the same day, the Wombat dug under the walls of Orange Rock in a raid, since he lacked the troops to besiege the city.  There he found Anguma in a tower overlooking the eastern sea.  They fought their own duel, which ended with each wounding the other, then wrestling and trying to push each other out of the tower.  The Song ends with the description of the Wombat and Anguma each dragging the other out of the tower window, where they fall to their deaths in the eastern sea.

--

Whatever the historical truth of the Song, it is clear from the archaeological record that the Kurnawal were pushed out of most of the north-east during this period.  Excavations of Dawn Dunes and Bountiful show a layer of destruction which can be dated to sometime between 1060-1080.  Below this the record shows Kurnawal pottery and artefacts, above it they are entirely replaced by Tjunini pottery.

Of the major Kurnawal cities, only Orange Rock survived the wars of this period.  Still, it appears that much of the population from the defeated cities survived and fled south.  A number of new Kurnawal towns can be dated to this period.  Of these, the most important were Narnac [Woodbury], Dabuni [Hobart] and Gamoma [Orford].  Here, the Kurnawal would thrive.  Despite later attempts by various Tjunini warleaders, the Kurnawal would never be completely dislodged from their new homes.

The main legacy of the War of the Princess was long-lasting enmity between Tjunini and Kurnawal.  The Tjunini took control of the rest of the northern coast; Bountiful and Three Waters [Launceston] became major cities under new kings.  The Kurnawal were pushed into the eastern coast; Orange Rock became their northernmost bastion on the main island.  For a time it was the capital, but the Kurnawal monarchs would eventually establish their royal city at Dabuni, far from the Tjunini threat.

In the immediate aftermath of the War, the border between the two peoples ran roughly from Orange Rock to Lake Sorrell, although it was never fixed in one place for long.  Friction over the border became a regular inspiration for wars, particularly disputes over the tin mines in the north-east.  The long-term trend has been for the Tjunini to push the Kurnawal further south, although there have been several temporary reversals.  The most significant long-term conquest has been Flinders Island, which for long held a Kurnawal hold-out population, but which was permanently conquered by the Tjunini in 1554.

The unending war between the two peoples would produce something unusual in Australasia: a very strong sense of nationalism and a view of particular lands as being the inalienable heritage of a particular people.  Even though both peoples fought amongst themselves from time to time, cooperation with anyone from the other people was regarded as the worst sort of treachery.  They also viewed their own lands as being part of their inalienable heritage, and a call to war to liberate any enemy-occupied lands would always be well-received amongst both the Tjunini and the Kurnawal.

--

In 1618, the whole of Tasmania is divided into three parts.  On the north coast dwell the Tjunini, the most numerous people.  Warriors, singers, feasters, and bronze-smiths par excellence, the Tjunini live according to their own code of honour.  Memories of the past guide how they think they should live in the present.  Writing is known to them, a necessary tool of government, but for their folk memory they rely on the ideals depicted by their bards.

Bards are their most honoured profession, requiring a combination of memory, musical talent, and dramatic flair.  The foundation of any bard’s skills is the memorisation and appropriate recitation of the many verses of the Song of the Princess.  Any bard who cannot remember the entirety of the Song is not considered a bard, but at best a student and at worst an imposter.  Tjunini bards know a variety of other epic songs, and compose many more topical and light-hearted songs which they recite when appropriate, but it is a rare winter’s evening when a bard does not recite a few verses of the Song.

As a people, the Tjunini have done their best to forget that they ever dwelt on the mainland.  They see themselves as the heroes of the world, descendants of those who answered the call of Tiyuratina and fought in the great war.  What happened before that war means little to them.  They adhere to what they see as the standards of behaviour and conduct laid down by the captains who fought in the war.  While the bards are the repositories of the full knowledge of the war, even a small child can recite the names of each of the great captains.

In truth, the Tjunini are much changed from their mainland forebears.  While they are a Gunnagalic people, like so many others in Australasia, their ancestors mingled their blood with the Palawa who lived on the Big Island before them.  About ten percent of the words in the Tjunini language are of Palawa origin, and an even higher percentage of place names and personal names.  Even the name of their greatest king, Tiyuratina, was originally a Palawa name, as were the names of his son and daughter.  Still, the Tjunini have forgotten this truth; they have pushed the Palawa off the north coast and into the less fertile highland regions of central and western Tasmania.  They trade with them from time to time, but consider them wild barbarians who lack honour.

Politically, the Tjunini have not much changed from the old system of petty kings which existed in the days of the War.  Or what they believe existed during the war, at any rate.  The Tjunini lands are divided into a number of feuding city-states, each ruled by a king who claims divine descent from the Rainbow Serpent.  The rank of the Nine-Fold King still exists as titular head of the Tjunini confederation, although there are now more than nine subject kings.  There has not been a continuous line of Nine-Fold Kings; there have been periods when no-one has held the crown, and several wars have been fought amongst the Tjunini to determine which head shall wear the crown.  Internecine warfare is an integral part of the Tjunini way of life; the vassal kings fiercely guard their individual rights, and fighting each other is as much a part of their tradition as the list of the great captains.  The Tjunini fight, in essence, because they have always been fighting.

On the east coast dwell the Kurnawal.  Like the Tjunini, these are a Gunnagalic-speaking people, but otherwise they have little in common.  Where the Tjunini are numerous, fractious and tradition-bound, the Kurnawal are less populous, but more united and less interested in the mores of the past.  The Kurnawal are a people who inherited a tradition of survival from the massacres and defeats of the War.  To them, cunning and resourcefulness are a way of life, both in war and in peace.  A Tjunini merchant will always name his price and expect it to be honoured, while a Kurnawal merchant would think that anyone who accepted the first price was a fool.  In war, the Kurnawal place much more emphasis on deviousness, feints, manoeuvres, and surprise attacks.

Where the Tjunini are politically divided, the Kurnawal have been forced by necessity to adopt a united monarchy, except for a renegade outpost at Jangani [Cockle Creek].  Their kings claim descent not from any divine beings, but from the daughter of Anguma, who survived the War.  They do not have a bardic tradition, but they inherited some of the old forms of poetry and storytelling which their ancestors used on the mainland.  The mainland Kurnawal used a form of alliterative verse to describe the deeds of their ancestors and of modern heroes.  The Kurnawal who live on the Big Island have kept up this tradition, but have developed it much further.

Where the Tjunini have bards who speak in song, the Kurnawal emphasise the use of the spoken word alone.  Their word for such speakers is wusaka, which can be broadly translated as poet, but which encompasses much more.  The wusaka recite not just alliterative verse, but also sagas and other epic tales, which often include many poetic stanzas as part of the tales.  When writing spread from the mainland, the Kurnawal enthusiastically adopted it to record the sagas, although they still emphasised oral recitation.

Most Kurnawal poets recite epics and poems in language which is meant to be easy to understand, since their audiences are usually the general populace.  However, there is another kind of poetry, which specialises in using metaphorical language, allusions, and other poetic devices.  These poets evolved out of an old Kurnawal tradition which was an equivalent to a court jester.  The early Kurnawal kings appointed an individual poet who was given exclusive permission to “scold” or chastise the king without fear of retribution.  While speaking rudely to a Kurnawal monarch could mean death for anyone else who was so foolish, the “scold” had free license to criticise the king’s action.  As part of the same tradition, any scolding had to be done in poetic speech rather than plain speech; the ambiguous language of the criticism made it more difficult for the common man to understand, while the kings had to be adept at understanding the literary language and allusions to understand the nature of the criticism.

The function of this class of poets has evolved considerably, but they are still remembered by their old name, the scolds.  Now they create poems and panegyrics praising the kings as often as criticising them.  They also create poems on a diverse range of topics, from religious to historical to mythical.  The best scolds are kept around the king’s court, but they also find audiences elsewhere, amongst the nobility or wealthy commoners.  Scolds speak in a poetic language which is intricate almost to the point of opaqueness; to the Kurnawal, who esteem cunning and cleverness, the more obscure the poetic language, the more it is appreciated.  The scolds pile allusion upon pun upon double meaning in an elliptical, inverted style of language which makes their meaning almost impossible for the casual listener to follow.

In the central uplands and the rugged lands of Tasmania’s south and west, the Palawa still dwell.  Once they lived all over the Big Island, but the Gunnagalic invaders have pushed them out of the flatter, more fertile lands on the north and east.  What they have left is the more rugged terrain, where the elevation and cool westerly winds means that it is less suitable for agriculture.  Both the Tjunini and Kurnawal usually treat them with hostility, calling them wild men, barbarians, uncouth speakers of an incomprehensible language, ignorant of farming and city-building.  The Palawa, for their part, often raid the fringes of Tjunini and Kurnawal territory, sometimes for food, sometimes for tools and weapons.  The Palawa also have some contact with the Islanders, who have mastered the difficult sailing route into Macquarie Harbour, and built a few timber-harvesting camps and trading outposts along its shores.

For while the Palawa were hunter-gatherers when the Gunnagalic peoples arrived, they have learned much since that time.  The Palawa have not taken up full-time farming, but they have acquired some domesticated crops from their neighbours.  They plant these crops in suitable areas, and at the right time of the year, they move to harvest them, and they store much of this food for later use.  The Palawa are not yet full farmers, but they are hunter-gardeners, and lead a semi-nomadic lifestyle.  With these gardened crops to feed them, the Palawa are more numerous than at any time in the last ten millennia, despite having lost so many of their ancestral lands.  They are still much fewer than the Tjunini or even the Kurnawal, but they are still thriving in their way.

For the Palawa have learned much from their neighbours, not just about farming.  The Palawa conduct only limited mining, but trade and raids have given them metal tools, and they have a few smiths who have learned how to melt and reforge bronze.  They have learned how to make textiles and ceramics.  Above all, they have learned how to make weapons, especially ranged weapons.  In some cases, ingenious Palawa have developed weapons beyond anything which the city-dwellers can match.  The most significant of these is a kind of longbow, which the Palawa lovingly craft from the wood of the Tasmanian myrtle [5].  All Palawa men learn to use this longbow, since it is very useful both for hunting and for piercing even the strongest of bronze armour.  Even the boldest Tjunini soldiers hesitate to chase Palawa into the hills when they might receive a barrage of arrows if they get too close to their targets.

Relations between the Palawa and their neighbours are often hostile, but not always; there is intermittent trade contact, for instance.  The Palawa lifestyle requires that they become expert hunters, and they are experts at moving without being noticed.  This ability makes them very useful as scouts, and both Tjunini and Kurnawal have been known to recruit Palawa auxiliaries during times of war.  The Palawa are too few to supply significant numbers of longbowmen, even if they were interested in doing so, but they excel at finding the enemy without being spotted themselves.

--

For all that Tjunini, Kurnawal and Palawa have so much hostility toward each other, there are three things which they all agree on.  Every person on the Big Island knows the merits of bronze, the good taste of a goose, and the worth of the cider gum.

For without a doubt, Tasmania is the island of bronze.  For a long time, the name which mainlanders called it meant “the place of tin.”  Tasmania has abundant reserves of tin and copper, and the peoples here have a wealth of bronze by the standards of mainlanders.  Bronze weapons are abundant; both Tjunini and Kurnawal make bronze swords, daggers, axes, spears, and maces.  Bronze tools are extremely common, far more than on the mainland: knives, hammers, chisels, wedges, saws and many other tools.  Bronze-based jewellery is popular and widespread, and some people can afford to use bronze nails, screws, horns and other musical instruments, to say nothing of cooking utensils and dishware.  Both Tjunini and Kurnawal can afford to protect their common soldiers with full bronze armour which would be considered extravagant even for elite officers in mainland armies.

The Tasmanians are aware of iron as a metal, since the Islanders have traded a few iron artefacts.  However, they regard iron as inferior to bronze.  Wrought iron from the mainland is less versatile than cast bronze, and much more prone to corrosion along the coast.  With ample quantities of bronze, both Tjunini and Kurnawal regard iron as little more than a curiosity.  The spread of ironworking on the mainland has reduced the importance of the tin trade, but on the Big Island itself, bronze remains the metal of choice.

Of course, while it is a useful metal, man cannot live by bronze alone.  The Tasmanian peoples have all become acquainted with agriculture to some degree, even the Palawa, and many of the mainland crops are quite suitable to growing on the Big Island.  Still, all of these peoples prefer meat, when they can get it.  They are fortunate in that regard, for they have another species of domesticated bird which is still uncommon on the mainland.

The Cape Barren goose (Cereopsis novaehollandiae) is a gregarious bird which breeds mostly on offshore islands; it is abundant on several of the Bass Strait islands.  Kurnawal sealers were the first to start it on the road to domestication, keeping semi-wild flocks on some of their sealing islands as a source of food while they were hunting seals.  Some Kurnawal brought these geese with them to the Big Island, since they had discovered that these birds could be easily bred and reared in captivity, since they are grazers that could be left to feed themselves on pasture.  Domesticated Cape Barren geese have become widespread across the Big Island; even the Palawa keep a few semi-wild flocks around as handy sources of meat and eggs.  Tasmanian cuisine features a variety of dishes based on geese, from simple roasted goose at feasts, to goose fat used as an equivalent to butter, to goose meat sprinkled with herbs and then slowly left to cook in its own fat (which also acts as a preservative).

The third thing which unites the peoples of Tasmania is the cider gum.  While the Big Island did not provide many new plants suitable for domestication, the cider gum would transform the culture of the Tjunini and Kurnawal settlers.  The Palawa had long learned to tap the cider gum for its sweet sap, which is similar to maple syrup.  While this was often used as a flavouring, the Palawa also discovered that if the syrup was sealed in a container and left to wild ferment, it would produce a mildly alcoholic beverage [7].

When the Tjunini and Kurnawal landed on the Big Island, they were quick to appreciate the virtues of the cider gum.  They brought their own tradition of brewing with them, which was mostly done with various kinds of yam wine.  The Tjunini and Kurnawal used ceramic containers which were much more easily sealed for suitable periods to allow fermentation, and they had discovered controlled use of yeast to make fermentation more reliable.  With these techniques, they could now brew much stronger ciders than the old wild-fermented Palawa versions (up to about 9% alcohol).

Gum cider has become one of the Big Island’s most valued products, supported by the cultivation of large numbers of cider gums.  All three of the Tasmanian peoples drink it to some degree.  The Tjunini, in particular, like nothing better than to feast away the long winter evenings, drinking gum cider while bards sing of the heroes of the War.  Gum cider is also a valued trade good.  The Islanders who regularly visit the northern coast trade it over a wide area.  Since the rise of ironworking on the mainland has reduced the value of the tin trade, gum cider has become the most well-known product of Tasmania.  No longer do people on the mainland speak of the Big Island or the Place of Tin; now, they call it the Cider Isle.

--

[1] Estimates of the Palawa population before European contact vary considerably, but most conclude that it was no more than ten thousand.  The Palawa as depicted here essentially are the historical Tasmanian Aborigines; the butterfly trap has meant that their languages and cultures are effectively unchanged until first contact with the colonisers from the mainland.

[2] Historically, this headland was named Circular Head by the first Europeans to see it (Bass and Flinders in 1798), although it is informally called the Nut.

[3] Historically, the first European surveyor who explored the Scottsdale region considered that it had the best soil in all Tasmania.  The inhabitants of the region seem to have liked that claim, since they named the town after him.  The modern region of Scottsdale is a major agricultural centre, especially for potato farming.

[4] The Tin Trail starts roughly at the modern town of Scottsdale (western end), runs through the rich tin mines around Derby, Moorina, Weldborough, and Blue Tier, and ends in the modern town of St Helens (eastern end).  This is the same trail used by tin miners during the Tasmanian tin rush of the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries; there were hundreds of tin mines along the trail, including the Briseis Mine which was for a while the world’s richest tin mine.

[5] Historians who view the Song as essentially accurate believe that this was the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1066, and so use this to date the beginning of the war.

[6] The Tasmanian myrtle (Nothofagus cunninghamii) is not actually related to the myrtle family, but is a member of the beech family.  It is quite common in the wetter areas of Tasmania, and produces a timber which is used to make some modern longbows.

[7] The Palawa use of the cider gum (Eucalyptus gunnii) for syrup and gum cider is exactly what they did, historically.  The cider gum is endemic to Tasmania, growing in both lowland and some highland areas.  It grows easily in cultivation, and is established as an ornamental plant in some parts of Europe.  Unlike most eucalypts, it can tolerate frosts and subzero temperatures.  Its potential for commercial cultivation is currently being explored.  In allohistorical Tasmania, the cider gum will become their most valuable crop.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #14: Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Cash

History calls it Kangaroo Island.  A small island, not even four and a half thousand square kilometres, but teeming with wildlife.  Some claim it to be one of the last unspoilt refuges on earth.  Kangaroos, koalas, wombats, goannas, echidnas, platypus and other Australian wildlife flourish here, without introduced predators.  In truth, it is far from pristine.  The native emu of this island has been hunted to extinction, and many of the indigenous animals were in fact introduced by European colonists.

Allohistory calls it simply the Island.  A place not of unspoilt scenery, but the crowded home of the wealthiest people in Australasia.  In 1618, on the eve of Dutch contact, the Island is home to fifty thousand people.  Dependent on commerce both for their food and their wealth, they have turned their small island home into the nexus of the greatest trade routes in the continent.

--

Like the much larger Tasmania, the Island once held a remnant population who were separated from the mainland by rising waves at the end of the last ice age.  Unlike Tasmania, the Island’s native population vanished sometime in prehistory, abandoning their homes and fleeing to the mainland millennia ago.  For a time, the Island was left to the kangaroos and wombats, while the mainlanders referred to it as the Land of the Dead [1].

The Island was resettled about 750 BC, during the Great Migrations.  One group of refugees from the abandoned city of Murray Bridge moved down the Fleurieu Peninsula and sailed across to the Island.  Early Gunnagalic peoples were not good shipbuilders, but the narrow strait between the Island and the mainland was easily crossed [2].

The settlers of the Island called themselves the Nangu.  They spoke a Gunnagalic language, one which was quite linguistically conservative.  With the relative isolation of their island, Nangu speakers were unaffected by many of the changes which spread across the mainland languages.  They adopted writing from the mainland during imperial times, and their early written records reveal that their language has changed relatively little since that time.  Later linguists would find the Nangu language invaluable in their efforts to reconstruct Proto-Gunnagalic.

Living on the Island, the Nangu were for many centuries an isolated, underpopulated backwater.  They received some ideas from the mainland, but the spread was often slow.  They learned the arts of bronze-working, although the metal was a rare trade good for centuries.  They adopted the new mainland farming techniques of crop rotation, and raised domesticated emus to replace the native Island emus which had been hunted to extinction during the early days of settlement [3].

Still, in many ways, the history of the mainland passed by without affecting the Island.  During the Imperial era, the Nangu were a subject people who vaguely acknowledged the imperial hegemony and occasionally paid tribute.  Yet the First Speakers never sent any invading armies across the water.  During the early tenth century, the Nangu simply stopped paying tribute to the Empire.  No-one in distant Garrkimang seems to have cared.  Certainly no army was sent in reconquest, even though this was the time when the Empire had its last burst of military expansion and conquered the Eyre Peninsula.  After the collapse of the Empire, the Nangu continued on largely untouched.  Warfare and political intrigue on the mainland was of little concern to the Islanders, since the bickering nations lacked the ability or interest to invade the Island.

Of course, the Nangu were never completely isolated.  Dependent on fishing for much of their food, they developed good shipbuilding techniques by the standards of early Gunnagalic peoples.  During the eleventh century, a few brave Islander captains started to sail directly to Tasmania, which they called Tjul Najima, the Island of Bronze.  The voyage was risky, especially the return leg, where they sometimes had to wait for weeks or months for a change in the prevailing winds.  Still, the rewards for successful captains were substantial.  Bronze on Tjul Najima was cheap enough to trade for Islander dyes and spices, then return home to sell the metal for excellent profits.  Previously the Nangu had received bronze only through a chain of mainland intermediaries; now they had much cheaper direct trade.

Islander ships expanded the bronze trade over the next few centuries.  Some more venturesome captains slowly broadened their trade network over the next couple of centuries.  Sporadic visits to the Eyre Peninsula were expanded into regular trading trips to Pankala [Port Lincoln], to trade bronze and gum cider for opals, salt, and agricultural produce.  Other captains started to call at Jugara [Victor Harbor], a small town on the most convenient natural harbour next to the Murray Mouth.  From here, they traded for goods which had been moved overland from ports on the Murray itself.

The early Islander trade network was relatively limited, since their ships could move only small volumes of goods, and that at considerable risk.  Yet it was enough to bring many new things to the Island, including new technologies and knowledge in medicine, masonry, and many other fields.

Of these new ideas, perhaps the most significant was the adoption of a new religion.  Plirism, the religion of the Sevenfold Path, had not yet had much success on the mainland.  In Tjibarr its followers were mostly spurned; among the decaying feudalism of the Junditmara and their Empire of the Lake, its followers were treated as infidels.

On the Island, though, the disciples of the Good Man found a receptive audience.  The first Plirite temple was founded at Crescent Bay [Kingscote] in 1204.  From here, Plirite priests sought to convert all of the Islanders.  They met with substantial success over the next few decades.  By 1240, about half of the Islanders carried out the rituals of the Sevenfold Path.  There were considerable religious tensions between Plirite converts and the older Nangu beliefs (which were derived from the early Gunnagalic religions).

At this time, the Island had no single monarch or established aristocratic class.  Instead, the population were divided into twenty-four bloodlines, which were derived from the old kitjigal system.  Bloodlines functioned much as extended clans, where the members were expected to defend each other in case of disputes.  Belonging to a particular bloodline was not a matter of strict descent; men could seek adoption into a new bloodline if they wished.  However, while birth did not always matter, loyalty did; early Islander history is rife with tales of feuds and vendettas between bloodlines which carried on for generations.

To bring order to the Island, the Nangu had established an institution of a yearly assembly by the elders (chiefs) of each of the bloodlines.  This assembly met to decide on the law, resolve disputes between bloodlines, and dispense other judicial functions.  In 1240, the assembled elders voted to convert the whole of the Island to the Plirite faith.  More or less willingly, the remaining adherents of the old beliefs adopted the new rituals.  More temples were built, and the Nangu became committed to their new faith.  In time, they would seek to spread it beyond the Island.

--

Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world ended in 1310, when the first Maori [4] exploration canoe landed in Raduru lands [Illawarra, NSW].  After this initial contact, the Maori started to make trading visits north and south.  In time, after chasing after rumours of bronze, they reached Tjul Najima.  Here they established what would become one of their major trade routes, exchanging their greenstone [jade], kauri amber, and textiles and cordage made from New Zealand flax for the local tin and gum cider.

With Nangu trading captains also regularly visiting Tjul Najima for bronze and gum cider, contact soon followed between Maori and Nangu.  Unlike many other Australian peoples, the Islanders had a keen interest in better ships for their own needs, both trading and fishing.  With the example of Maori ships, and with a few Maori who were persuaded to live on the Island and share their knowledge of shipbuilding and navigation techniques, the Nangu became the best seafarers in Australia.

History does not record the precise date of Maori-Nangu contact, but by 1380, Islander records describe the construction of twin-hulled boats.  Inspired by Maori examples, these were dual-masted vessels whose twin hulls gave them great stability and speed.  These boats also had lateen sails (woven from native flax) which were extremely manoeuvrable.  Thanks to the Maori, the Nangu learned the art of tacking into the wind; the best Islander captains and crews could sail their ships within 60 degrees of the wind.  This meant that their ships were capable of sailing even into the strong winds of the Roaring Forties.

The old Nangu ships had used a shallow enough draft that they could be pulled up onto a beach if one was available, or use a port and wait for a favourable wind.  With their new ships, the direction of the wind became less of a concern, although their ships could still be pulled ashore in rough weather if the captain chose to do so.

The basic design of the Nangu ships would be similar for the next few centuries, although they made some refinements.  Some Islander captains started to use larger sailing vessels which could not be pulled onto any beach, but which needed to operate from a port.  By the late sixteenth century, a few of these ships were steered using a rudder rather than the traditional steering oar.  However, even at the time of European contact, most smaller Nangu ships were still operated with a steering oar.  There had been some refinements, but the general design would still have looked familiar to any Maori of the early fourteenth century.

With their new ships, and with their keen eye for anything which might turn a profit, the Islanders expanded their incipient trading network into a major enterprise.  Nangu ships could carry sizeable cargoes, and their captains regularly sought new markets.  One of their major roles was as middlemen who carried tin, gum cider and gold from Tjul Najima to destinations across mainland Australia.  This included the Yadji across the Strait, the Mutjing in the Eyre Peninsula, and Tjibarr and the other Murray kingdoms, via Jugara and a road to the Bitter Lake [Lake Alexandrina].

In time, Nangu captains sailed around the barrier of the treeless desert, and made contact with the expanding Atjuntja dominions.  This soon became a flourishing part of their trade network, and allowed the exchange of many ideas, crops and technologies between the east and the west of Australia.  The Atjuntja acquired a much greater variety of eastern crops, and the mixed blessing of Gunnagalic medicine.  Via the Islanders, the Yadji and the Murray kingdoms learned the Atjuntja technologies for working with iron.

--

In 1618, the Island is the most densely-populated nation in Australasia.  Fifty thousand people live crowded but happy lives on the Island.  Trade and shipping is their lifeblood; not even the most intensive cultivation of Australian crops could support such a population.  The Nangu do grow some food on the Island, and have large fishing fleets which venture across much of the Southern Ocean.  Even with this, they rely on bulk shipping of wattle seeds and yams from the Mutjing city-states to feed their people.  The Island is not completely stripped of trees, but timber is valuable enough for other purposes (mostly building) that most new Islander ships are now built further afield, either on the Eyre Peninsula or in timber camps on Tjul Najima.

Theirs is a society in the midst of urbanisation.  There are still substantial small holdings in some of the rural areas, and the bloodlines remain socially divided, but the importation of food has meant that more and more people are now clustering in cities.  Between them, the two largest cities, Crescent Bay and Deadwatch [Penneshaw] have about twenty thousand inhabitants.

The Island’s government is still divided between the twenty-one surviving bloodlines, each of which preserves its claim to certain lands and trading rights.  Competition between the bloodlines is one of the major drivers in their trading network.  Each captain belongs to one bloodline or another, and they try to outdo each other in obtaining the greatest profits.  The annual meeting of the Council of Elders maintains some order and does its best to resolve disputes amongst the bloodlines.  Still, for all that the Nangu have converted to the supposedly peaceful faith of the Good Man, feuds and vendettas are common amongst the bloodlines.

In their lifestyle, the Islanders have abundant metal for tools, weapons and jewellery, all of it imported.  Iron tools are used for most purposes on the Island itself, but since iron rusts quickly in salt air, they use bronze on their ships or close to the coast.  In their early days on the Island, they lived in houses built of wood and earth, but with access to iron tools, most of their buildings are constructed from the local granite.  Still, the Nangu are a people more given to personal ornamentation than to constructing many large buildings; most of the sizable edifices on the Island are the temples and sanctuaries of Plirite priests.  Those temples are richly adorned with gold, silver and bronze donated by pious trader captains.

Shipping and trade underlie everything which the Islanders do, in one way or another.  Their trade network is the most extensive in Australasia.  In direct trade, their ships carry goods from one side of the continent to the other, and through their de facto colony of Jugara, they have links to the ancient trade routes of the Murray basin.

To the west, the Islanders regularly visit the Atjuntja dominions.  Their visits are accepted by the Kings of Kings, who have established a trading quarter for them to use in the White City.  The Islanders do not usually sail much further than the White City itself; the Atjuntja do not encourage visitors to round Cape Leeuwin [5].  A few Islander ships have visited the Indian Ocean from time to time, but their regular trading fleets go only to the White City, Warneang [Denmark] and a small port built south of Red Eye [Ravensthorpe].

To the east, Islander traders regularly visit ports in the Yadji lands and on Tjul Najima.  Occasionally, they venture much further.  Some bold Islander captains have been known to call as far north-east as the Nyumigal and Raduru of southern New South Wales, and there have been occasional diplomatic contacts with the Patjimunra in the Hunter Valley.  Yet such visits remain rare; there are limits to how far Islander ships can sail, and much of the trade here is in Maori hands.  Within these limits, the Islanders are the dominant maritime power.

The Islanders are mostly an economic power, but they are also adherents of Plirism, which encourages conversion of other peoples.  The reception of this faith has varied remarkably amongst the various peoples who have come into contact with the Islanders.  The Atjuntja sternly discourage proselytisation, to the point of executing any would-be converts.  The Yadji are also intolerant of other faiths, and persecute any of their subjects who convert to the Plirite faith.  Tjibarr had long since made its own accommodation with the disciples of the Good Man, and the Islanders have had little influence there.

However, among the Mutjing city-states and parts of Tjul Najima, Plirite priests have found a much more receptive audience.  The Mutjing have converted almost completely to the new faith.  So have many of the inhabitants of Tjul Najima, although with more reservations.  Even those Tjunini and Kurnawal who have adopted Plirism retain most of their old attitudes, especially toward nationalism.  The Palawa are prepared to listen to the Islanders who speak of the Good Man and his teachings, but their conversion has mostly been syncretic, where they adopt the Good Man’s teachings alongside their old beliefs.  In recent times, the Islanders have established a few missions on the eastern coast of the continent, where some peoples have accepted the new faith.

The majority of the Nangu still live on the Island itself, but they do have some settlements and colonies elsewhere.  Some of these are under foreign rule, such as the Islander quarter in the White City, or in some of the Yadji ports.  Others are independent colonies, such as the timber camps and trading outposts in Macquarie Harbour [in Tasmania].

The Islanders also have an isolated mainland settlement whose name translates rather exactly as Isolation [Eucla].  This is in the middle of the treeless desert [Nullarbor].  Here farming is marginal, but fishing is good, and the settlement can sustain itself.  Isolation is mostly used as a stopover point for ships on the western trade; they sometimes visit if they are running low on supplies or fleeing bad weather.

For all that Islander ships voyage far and wide across the continent, their most important trading destination is quite close to their home island.  This is the Islander settlement of Jugara [Victor Harbor].  A few people lived there since ancient times, but the Islanders turned it into a major settlement.  Jugara is the closest good harbour to the Murray Mouth, and it has become an essential link in trade with the interior.  The Murray itself is not navigable from the sea, but from Jugara the Islanders built a road to Bunara [Goolwa], a port on the Bitter Lake, where goods could be carried by people or by dog-pulled travois.  From here, riverboats could move trade goods throughout the Murray basin [6].  This connected the old trade routes along the Murray and Darling rivers with the maritime trade networks of the Islanders, and led to a burgeoning growth in trade.

With the linking of the interior and maritime trading networks, Jugara grew into a bustling port, with a great variety of peoples visiting here.  While the Islanders have always sought to maintain a monopoly on maritime shipping, they have never been averse to carrying other people on their ships.  So Jugara has grown into a great entrepot where many peoples mingle; a place of vice and wealth.  Here the Nangu are the largest ethnicity, and their “port captain” is the effective ruler of the city, but they are not alone.  In Jugara live haughty Yadji, boisterous Nangu, hot-headed Gunnagal [7], drunken Tjunini and Kurnawal from the Cider Isle, stoic Atjuntja from the far west, wary Mutjing, and even the occasional Maori from distant Aotearoa.

Jugara has been an effective Islander colony since the fifteenth century, although its location makes it politically precarious.  The lands between the Murray Mouth and Port Augusta have long been a contested region between the Yadji Empire and the kingdom of Tjibarr.  However, while wars have raged and borders shifted, by unspoken convention, neither nation’s armies would plunder Jugara, Bunara or the road between them.  The benefits of the trade were too valuable.  Conquerors would impose taxes, duties and levies, but they never sought to close off trade entirely.  This suits the Islanders, who are usually neutral in disputes between Yadji and Tjibarr.  The tension between the two nations has another valuable advantage for the Islanders, since it means that the closest mainland ports to the Island are not available as a base for invasion.

So, in 1618, the Islanders are wealthy and flourishing.  Military invasion from the mainland is not a serious risk, unless the Yadji can inflict the decisive defeat on Tjibarr which they have been seeking for so long.  The only threat to the Islanders’ way of life comes from much further afield.  With Islander captains always voyaging so far in search of profits, there are always a few Islanders in the west.  So when the Raw Ones come out of the far west beyond the seas, Islanders will be among the first to hear of them...

--

[1] Kangaroo Island was inhabited until some time between 3000 – 200 BC.  It is unclear from the archaeological record whether the inhabitants died out or abandoned the island for the mainland.  Given the uncertainty over the dates, it’s also not clear whether the island would still be inhabited by the time Gunnagalic peoples moved there.  Even if it was inhabited, though, the relatively few hunter-gatherer inhabitants would have been overwhelmed by the demographic tide from the mainland.

[2] Investigator Strait, which separates Kangaroo Island from the mainland, is narrow enough that there have been reports of people who successfully swam across it.

[3] Kangaroo Island held a dwarf species of emu, variously called the Kangaroo Island emu or dwarf emu (Dromaius baudinianus) which was hunted to extinction by European whalers and sealers who used the island as a base of operations.  In allohistorical Australia, it will similarly be easy prey for the early migrating Nangu.

[4] Some of the individual Maori tribes called themselves Tangata, which means “people.”  As happened historically, Maori developed as a word which collectively referred to all of the Maori tribes, to distinguish them from outsiders (i.e. *Australians).

[5] The Atjuntja economic system relies on moving goods and tribute along internal routes.  Allowing the Islanders to take over their internal trade would undermine their existing system, so the Atjuntja only permit the Islanders access to a few trade ports which can be used to traffic goods between the east and western parts of the continent.

[6] Victor Harbor (which is the correct spelling, oddly enough) was used similarly in historical Australia; one of Australia’s early railways connected it to Goolwa to move goods without needing to navigate the Murray Mouth.

[7] In 1618, the term Gunnagal is used to refer to people who live along much of the Murray itself, mostly from Tjibarr and from some other Murray kingdoms.  Later ethnographers and historians will use the term to refer to the ancestral Gunnagalic-speaking peoples.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #15: The Lords Of The Lake

This post provides more information about the history of the Junditmara, the oldest sedentary people in allohistorical Australia, and describes the beginning of the rise of the Yadji, who by 1618 would rule the most populous nation in all of Australasia.

--

Junditmara: an ancient people in an ancient land.  Their forefathers were among the earliest people in the world to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, based on elaborate aquaculture and eel-farming.  They have maintained a continuous cultural tradition since that time; the region around Tae Rak [Lake Condah] has been continuously occupied by Junditmara peoples for eight thousand years.

Long before the ancestors of the Gunnagal started to farm red yams along the Nyalananga [River Murray], the Junditmara were building in stone and mobilising workforces of thousands to maintain their stone weirs and dams.  Their aquaculture was in fact the original inspiration for the early Gunnagalic farmers, who took their techniques and adapted them to the drier conditions but much greater water volume of the Nyalananga.

While an ancient people, the Junditmara were few in number when compared to the farming civilization which emerged along the Nyalananga.  Until they had access to crops, the sedentary Junditmara population never rose much above ten thousand, divided into four chiefdoms clustered around Tae Rak.  In comparison, the Gunnagalic-speaking peoples had a population of almost a million people by 1000 BC, occupied most of the Nyalananga, and had six major cities and many smaller towns.

The early Gunnagal civilization collapsed after 1000 BC, and the resulting migrations brought domesticated crops and animals to the Junditmara peoples.  The Junditmara absorbed a few of the Gunnagalic immigrants and took up their farming ways.  This allowed the Junditmara chiefdoms to expand their territory and started a substantial increase in their population.  Unlike most non-Gunnagalic-speaking peoples, the Junditmara maintained their identity, language and religion despite the Gunnagalic tide.

In some ways, the Junditmara became innovators.  They were the first people to domesticate the tiger quoll, which they used to control rodent pests and in some cases as a fireside companion.  They were also the first people to make widespread use of muntries, a native fruit which the Junditmara learned to grow using trellises to increase the yield [1].  They adopted the emu as a domesticated bird before it reached the surviving Gunnagal cities along the Nyalananga.

Still, for all of their increase in population, the Junditmara of the first millennium BC remained a relative backwater.  They were divided into a varying number of chiefdoms (usually five) who fought amongst themselves, and preserved enough of their own sense of identity that they withstood pressure from neighbouring peoples.  They were connected into the broader trade networks around the rest of the continent; most commonly, they traded dried muntries and other fruits, smoked eel meat, and some timber, for tin and copper which they shaped into bronze.

The large-scale population movements of the Great Migrations were largely ended by 100 AD, at least in southern Victoria.  (Population movements elsewhere lasted about a century longer).  At the end of the migration period, the Junditmara occupied a region roughly bounded in the west by Portland and Coleraine, in the north by the Grampians, and then by a rough line running south-east to Camperdown and then further south to the Otways.

Within these borders, the Junditmara were divided into several competing chiefdoms.  The borders and even existence of these kingdoms was fluid, with new dynasties emerging regularly, and older ones being defeated and absorbed.  The most important population centres during this period were Gurndjit [Portland], which sheltered the best port for fishing, Jurundit [Koroit], whose rich volcanic soils supported the best farming in their region, Tuhonong [Hamilton], whose proximity to their ancestral lake Tae Rak made it their most important spiritual centre, and Nguwurru [Cobden], the largest population centre in the eastern part of Junditmara territory.

The competing chiefdoms fought regular wars for control of territory and the major population centres.  However, the Junditmara chiefdoms did not have any clear rules for succession; any male descendant or close blood relative could claim the title of chief.  This led to regular fratricidal wars amongst the Junditmara, and which prevented the emergence of any long-lasting kingdoms.

Outside their borders, the Junditmara were surrounded by Gunnagalic-speaking peoples on every side.  The most important of these were the Tjunini who lived around the Otways to the south-east, the Giratji who lived to the east, the Yadilli and Tiwarang to the west, and the Yotjuwal to the north.  While borders were fluid, there was a gradual long-term trend for the Junditmara to slowly expand their borders; their aquaculture allowed them to support slightly higher populations than their neighbouring peoples [2].

During the period from 200-400 AD, the population of all of southern Victoria was substantially increased by the diffusion of new agricultural techniques from the Classical Gunnagal cities to the north, such as crop rotation and companion planting.  The growing population saw the emergence of the first political entities amongst the Junditmara which were large and stable enough to be called kingdoms.  It also meant that their trade and other contacts with the Classical Gunnagal became much more significant.  The first indisputable historical account of the Junditmara emerges during this period.  While the Junditmara did not yet have writing, records in Tjibarr dated to 265 AD speak of a trader who visited “Tjuonong” and who brought back golden jewellery and finely-woven textiles.

These records make it clear that even at this early stage, the Junditmara were familiar with the two products for which their descendants would be famed around the world.  Finely-woven textiles were an integral part of Junditmara society for centuries.  Even in their pre-farming days, possum-skin coats had been used both as a sign of status and protection from the cold.  With the spread of flax and linen, Junditmara weavers developed a variety of elaborate techniques.  They used an incredible range of dyes, from copper and other metals, from wattle leaves and roots, from tree sap, from a variety of other plants, from ochre, and from shellfish.  They used these to dyes to create intricately-patterned textiles – blankets, garments, coiled baskets, bags, slings – which were markers of status, and also used in a variety of religious ceremonies.

Gold-smithing was another venerable Junditmara practice which would became known around the world.  The early Junditmara did not have much access to gold, apart from one field in the Grampians on the edge of their territory.  However, not far to their east, in the lands of the Giratji, were some of the richest gold-fields in Australia.  Later archaeological investigations in the region of Ballarat would find the first traces of gold mining here in the first century AD, and gold would be traded from the Giratji both east and west.

The Junditmara esteemed gold far more than the Giratji, and adopted it for both decorative and religious purposes.  Junditmara chiefs wore gold masks on important occasions, and other wealthy people used it for jewellery and other ornamentation.  In Junditmara temples, gold was the essential metal for a variety of ritual objects, particularly for any lamps or fire-holders.

In time, the Junditmara would combine these two specialities, leading to one of the names which they would be known to outsiders: the weavers of gold.  Gold and silver threads were woven into the capes and other garments for the priests and chiefs, or carefully-positioned small plates of silver and gold were added to the woven products.  Sometimes these capes were further decorated with brightly-coloured bird feathers, such as those of lorikeets, cockatoos, or other parrots, or the iridescent, lustrous sheen of mother-of-pearl from abalone shells.  The variety and splendour of these textiles made considerable impressions on visitors to Junditmara territory, and their descendants were still practicing these arts in 1618.

--

The Junditmara chiefdoms developed on a largely independent path for many centuries.  While they had acquired farming, domesticated animals and other arts of civilization from the Gunnagal, they had applied their own interests and specialisations to these technologies.  The twin barriers of language and religion meant that they always differentiated themselves from their Gunnagalic neighbours, even when they had contact with them.

The rise of the Empire cut short the Junditmara’s separate development.  The chiefdoms had started to develop into more stable kingdoms, but this did not help them to stave off the advance of Watjubaga’s armies.  In a series of campaigns which lasted from 718-764 AD, the Junditmara kingdoms were conquered by the Empire.

The Junditmara never made willing imperial subjects.  At times they were quiet, but even those instances were merely sullen peaces.  In their religious views and their social codes, the Junditmara were an alien people by Gunnagalic standards, and especially when compared to the views of the Biral who ruled the Empire.

The Junditmara had a hierarchical social system based on duty to one’s elders, conformity, and the rewarding of loyalty.  Imperial rule did not fit into this system, particularly the system of labour drafts where people would be required to work on tasks assigned to suit imperial preferences.  Junditmara expected to work to help their own family and local community; they cared nothing for working for others, and viewed labour drafts as forced betrayal of their families.  The result was simmering tension, numerous revolts, and the eventual overthrow of imperial rule in 907 AD.

While the Junditmara resented the imperial conquerors, that did not prevent them from acquiring a variety of knowledge from their Biral rulers.  Writing spread with the imperial conquest; while the Biral used mostly their own language in administration, the Junditmara took the Gunnagalic script and adapted it to their own language.  The Junditmara also inherited the imperial knowledge in fields such as metallurgy, medicine, astronomy, and the Gunnagalic calendar.

After the restoration of their independence, the Junditmara took this knowledge and applied it to their own ends.  There were many aspects of Gunnagalic culture which were either explicitly rejected or never adopted, such as their ball sports, their religious views, and the social system of the factions.  With the return of their own sovereignty, the Junditmara once again started to develop on their own path...

--

The revolts which overthrew the Empire were based on a conscious sense of ethnic nationalism.  The Junditmara saw themselves as a sovereign people and sought to remove unwanted foreign overlords.  This sense of common purpose meant that what they created what was meant to be a new nation for all the Junditmara-speaking peoples.  At Tuhunong, the city near Tae Rak, they appointed the rebellion’s leading general to become the Lord of the Lake.  This was meant to be an empire; the role was inspired by the imperial rank of the First Speakers of Watjubaga.  The Lord of the Lake’s role was meant to be to lead all of the Junditmara.

In theory, anyway.

Although notionally an empire, the Junditmara had in fact formed a confederation.  The old competing chiefdoms had not been restored, but there were still many local aristocrats who had built substantial local reputations.  Moreover, one of the legacies of imperial rule was that the Junditmara had a considerable distrust of too much central authority.  This meant that while there was now an Emperor, the local chiefs were disinclined to listen to what he said.

Instead, what emerged after Watjubaga’s overthrow was not an empire, but a community of local rulers who first ruled in the name of the Emperor, and after a couple of generations, in their own names.  As a people, the Junditmara had always maintained a strong sense of hierarchy, of kinship, and of membership in a local community.  They found little comfort in having a distant Emperor, and gave their loyalty to the emerging social class of local rulers.

These new leaders were called otjima, a name which translates literally as “golden men.”  They became the ruling nobility of the Junditmara, each with their own hereditary authority to control a particular region, collect tribute in the form of goods or labour, and defend its inhabitants from all enemies.  For centuries, all Junditmara acknowledged the theoretical authority of the Emperor, while in practice their loyalty went no further than their local otjima.  Even the otjima rarely met the Emperor, and except for an occasional instance where the Emperor was asked to mediate between feuding otjima, they gave the Emperor no heed either.  One of the early otjima was reported to have said, “I promise to obey the Emperor in all things, provided he promises not to order me to do anything.”

To defend their lands and enforce their will, the otjima made use of another emerging social class: the first professional military class within Junditmara society.  During the pre-Watjubaga days, the Junditmara had not had much in the way of professional soldiers.  Their chiefs had a few household guards, but otherwise their armies were mostly local levies and militia who took up arms at need.

The old ways changed with the new military technology and organised which Watjubaga brought.  Now, to be effective in battle, soldiers needed bronze armour, a bronze sword, and usually a bronze spearhead.  Bronze was available, thanks to imports from the Cider Isle, but it was expensive.  Only a few people could afford such quantities of metal on their own.  Moreover, the new military tactics required considerable training.  Soldiering needed to become a permanent profession, not just for ordinary people who were called up at need.

In these circumstances, it did not take long for a hereditary military class to emerge in Junditmara society.  They were called the briyuna, a word which originally meant “hunter” but which took on a new meaning in the time of the Empire of the Lake.  A briyuna was born into the life of a warrior, and trained for their craft since childhood.  Briyuna learned how to use a wide variety of weapons – swords, daggers, maces, axes, spears, bows, javelins, slings – and even techniques of unarmed combat.  They had strict standards of physical discipline to ensure that they had the strength and fitness to wear armour for extended periods while marching and then fighting.

As a people, the Junditmara had rigid social codes and expectations, and nowhere would these be more clearly-articulated than for the briyuna.  The briyuna were expected to live according to a warrior’s code which emphasised courage, loyalty to one’s comrades, and unquestioning obedience to one’s lord (otjima).  They were expected to maintain their skill in arms, and to demonstrate it both in peacetime (through duels and displays of prowess) and on the battlefield.  Cowardice was the ultimate failing, and a briyuna who was condemned for cowardice or fleeing the battlefield would be spurned by lord and family.  Briyuna were taught not to fear death; indeed, in keeping with Junditmara beliefs, no-one was better prepared to die than one who had died while armed.

Briyuna were expected to be honourable men in both peace and war.  While there was no obligation to accept an opponent’s surrender or to fight an opponent on even terms, it was considered a great breach of honour to harm a prisoner once their surrender had been accepted.  Likewise, in peacetime briyuna were expected to keep to their sworn word, never lie about matters of honour, and to uphold both their personal reputation and that of their otjima.  They were expected not to inflict violence on civilians except if deliberately insulted or in self-defence; to do so in other circumstances was a grave breach of honour.

Still, the code of the briyuna did not protect everyone.  The principle of not harming civilians applied only to ethnic Junditmara; people of other faiths or language were not protected.  Moreover, the code only protected civilians’ lives, not their property.  In warfare, briyuna were permitted to plunder and take whatever portable wealth they could with them, as trophies and rewards for war.  If civilians tried to resist such plundering, then they were no longer protected by the briyuna code.

In their personal lives, briyuna were expected to maintain an attitude of temperance and moderation in all things.  They were certainly permitted to enjoy pleasures, including the traditional yam wine, women and song (not necessarily in that order), but they were not to let their pleasures control them.  A briyuna who drank to excess would be considered both personally disgraced for losing control of himself, and also as having failed in his duty to his lord since he would not be able to fight properly while drunk.  Likewise, a briyuna who sought comfort in a woman’s arms was acting appropriately, while one who put concern for a woman above his duties would be considered to have shamed his name.

While the life of a briyuna was in theory one of continual preparation for warfare, in practice they spent much more time at peace than at war.  Briyuna were always expected to be literate, and indeed to have a thorough knowledge of the literary and historical classics of Junditmara society.  As such, they often indulged a variety of other pursuits besides purely studying warfare.  Many briyuna acted as administrators for their lords, since they were considered the most trustworthy of servants.  They were also often involved in a variety of cultural pursuits; several briyuna became noted singers, poets, and artists.

--

The formal rule of the Lords of the Lake lasted for nearly four centuries, from 909 AD to 1289 AD.  For virtually all of that time, the Junditmara lived under the theoretical authority of these emperors, but the actual authority of their local otjima.  At times, this meant that as a people, the Junditmara expanded their territory, as would-be otjima pushed into new territory.  This meant that the remaining Tjunini around the Otways were absorbed by Junditmara expansion.  A similar process saw most of the Tiwarang people pushed out of south-western Victoria as emerging otjima claimed new lands of their own.

However, the decentralisation of imperial authority also led to increasingly bloody struggles amongst the otjima.  There were no formal divisions in rank amongst the otjima; in theory each of them had the same status, and answered only to the Emperor.  The closest thing to a formal division of rank was that each year the Emperor would name Twenty Counsellors who were meant to advise him for the following year.  This normally included the wealthiest and most prestigious otjima, but not always; some Emperors named lesser otjima to the Twenty for a year as an effective bribe to persuade them to accept imperial mediation in their disputes with their neighbours.

In informal status and control of territory, though, the otjima were never equal, and they regularly fought to gain territory or prestige.  It became an axiom amongst the Junditmara that “a briyuna is loyal to his otjima, and an otjima is loyal only to himself.”  Sometimes they formed alliances, but as the centuries progressed, the divisions amongst them became more violently and treacherously expressed.  By 1200 AD, it was popularly said that each hilltop had its own otjima, which in some areas was not an exaggeration.

The infighting and political fragmentation contributed to the gradual decline of the Empire of the Lake, but the deterioration was accelerated when the first Marnitja epidemic swept through the Junditmara realm in 1208-09.  The first blow of the Waiting Death fell heavily on the Junditmara; nearly twenty percent of their population succumbed to the ravages of the pink cough or the feverish delirium which followed [3].  In its first wave, the virus did not discriminate between fit or weak, young or old, healthy or unhealthy; all were equally vulnerable to the Waiting Death.

The effects of this epidemic were devastating to the Junditmara social order.  Many of the more prominent ruling otjima died, along with a significant proportion of their experienced briyuna.  This led to an increase in internecine warfare, as would-be successors fought amongst themselves, or surviving otjima sought to take advantage of inexperienced heirs by invading the territory of their dead rivals.  With so many experienced briyuna dead, these battles were often bloodier and more badly-coordinated than would have been the case under their veteran predecessors.  The fractious warfare undermined the already limited credibility of the rule of the Lord of the Lake.

The death toll of the Waiting Death and the subsequent warfare had profound social effects on the Junditmara.  Their surviving art and literature of this time shows the emergence of apocalyptic themes, and depicts the first beginnings of a shift away from the martial code of the briyuna.  The older form of literature was represented in songs, poems and heroic tales which had some similarities to the romances of medieval Europe.  In these tales, briyuna were invariably depicted as the epitome of honour, devotion, and self-confidence.  In the tales which emerged after the arrival of Marnitja, there are new depictions of briyuna as more human and realistic, with human failings and mistakes.

Likewise, the apocalyptic themes of the time resulted in new shifts in Junditmara religion.  Unlike their Gunnagalic neighbours, the Junditmara had always viewed the world and time as something with a beginning and an end, not an endless cycle of eternity.  With the great dying of the early thirteenth century, their old beliefs were reshaped into a more apocalyptic theology.  New religious visionaries appeared, who proclaimed that the times they were living in were the last days of the world, before the time when the Neverborn would break free from His home in the womb of the earth and call His chosen warriors to fight in the last great battle against the Lord of the Night.

Amidst the chaos of these times, one otjima family rose to prominence, one whose name would become synonymous with the most populous empire on the continent.  The Yadji were one of many otjima families who had arisen amongst the Junditmara.  The first surviving record of the Yadji is from 1067, when a man named Narryani Yadji led a band of briyuna to conquer a small town named Kirunmara [Terang, Victoria] and had himself proclaimed as an otjima.

Of itself, Kurinmara held little to distinguish itself from so many other small towns and settlements under the nominal rule of the Lord of the Lake.  It had decent rainfall, by the standards of the Junditmara, and adequate although hardly spectacular soils.  It was toward the eastern frontier of Junditmara territory, but nowhere which offered any strategic significance or even defensibility.  A small lake just to the south was about the only feature of interest; to the water-loving Junditmara, this lake could be expanded into a series of swamps and open water which would supply regular meals of fish and waterbirds to the table of the ruling otjima.

Still, while the Yadji were for so long just one otjima family among many, they were reasonably successful ones.  Their rulers were on the whole more capable than most of their rivals, which allowed them to conquer a reasonable stretch of territory by 1150.  In this year, surviving records from Tuhunong first include a Yadji otjima among the Twenty Counsellors.  This was an indication of their success, and for the next century, there would be a Yadji named to the Twenty each year.

When the first great Marnitja epidemic swept through Kurinmara in 1209, the Yadji suffered along with everyone else.  Their ruling otjima died in a viral-induced delirium, and his heir, Ouyamunna Yadji, contracted the pink cough two days after he inherited the family title.  However, while he waited to know whether he would live or die, he had substantial motivation to create a legacy for himself.  Ouyamunna is reported to have said, “Soon I will have forgotten the world, but the world will not soon forget me.”

In the months while he waited for death, Ouyamunna found a way to create his legacy.  He changed the rules of warfare as they had existed among the Junditmara for three centuries.  Warfare was meant to be the role of well-trained and armoured briyuna who fought for their lord.  Ouyamunna decided to recruit a new class of warrior from the men who had survived the pink cough, and who were waiting to know their fate.  He is said to have told these men, “Soon you will leave the world, but the manner of your leaving it is up to you.”

The warriors who Ouyamunna recruited were mostly not briyuna, and they had limited training in using swords or wearing armour.  In any case, the Yadji family did not have enough wealth to equip so many new warriors with bronze armour and swords.  For weapons, he gave them axes and maces, since they were easier to find and most of the men had used such things as tools.  For armour, he gave them nothing, but Ouyamunna would turn the lack of armour into an advantage.  He did not have or want men who fought coolly and well-armoured.  He wanted men who would be consumed with the fury of battle, and who cared naught whether they lived or died, because they already expected to die soon.

Ouyamunna got what he wanted.

The new warriors he created wore no armour, just clothes of woven flax died crimson to mark the death they already expected.  Before they entered battle, these men worked themselves into a trance-like state through a combination of chanting, ritualised dancing, and consumption of native tobacco [4] and certain mushrooms which were known to deaden pain.  When they entered the battle, these warriors were consumed in a violent frenzy, howling with fury, rushing headlong at the enemy regardless of the odds, and striking blows with what appeared to be superhuman strength.  In their frenzy, they shrugged off wounds, and often became so indiscriminate in their killing that they would not distinguish between friend and enemy.  They fought with incredible energy until the battlefield was cleared of any foes, and then as often as not, they collapsed in exhaustion and would not recover for days.

Ouyamunna did not, in fact, survive the Waiting Death.  Whether by chance or through natural resistance, he held off the onset of the death fever much longer than most.  It took nearly a year before he showed the first symptoms, but in time the delirium consumed him as it had consumed so many before him.  He fought off the fevered delirium better than most; it took three and a half months from the onset of the fever until he breathed his last.  In that time, though, the death warriors he had created made a legacy for him.  They swept battlefield after battlefield clean of foes – and sometimes each other, too.  In fourteen months, Ouyamunna defeated and conquered thirteen other otjima, and more than tripled the size of Yadji territory in the process.

The rise of the Yadji had begun.

--

[1] Muntries (Kunzea pomifera) are one of several native fruits common to southern Victoria which are suitable for domestication.  They are used as an occasional “bushfood” today, with some commercial harvest, and have also occasionally been grown overseas.  (They were first recorded as cultivated in England in 1889).

[2] While the Gunnagalic ancestors of the neighbouring peoples had practiced aquaculture, these practices were lost during the migrations.

[3] This death toll is a higher percentage of the population than Marnitja will have on most other peoples (such as Eurasians), for two reasons.  Marnitja here is just emerging as an epidemic disease, and is still quite virulent.  It will evolve to be somewhat less deadly over the next couple of centuries.  The other reason is that since at this point the *Australian peoples have such limited exposure to epidemic diseases, their immune systems are still quite weak, and this exacerbates the death toll.  Repeated exposure to Marnitja over the next few generations will not only produce some natural resistance to the disease, it will also mean that their adaptive immune systems are somewhat stronger against all diseases.

[4] The native tobacco mentioned here is grown from several native Australian plants in the Nicotiana genus (principally N. benthamiana) which are related to domesticated tobacco from the Americas (N. tabacum and N. rustica).  These plants were used by various historical Aboriginal peoples as stimulants.  They are not the same as the main kunduri drug cultivated in allohistorical Australia; that is grown from a native corkwood species (Duboisia hopwoodii) which is only distantly related to domesticated tobacco.  The Australian Nicotiana species do contain nicotine, but have a much harsher taste and milder effect than corkwood kunduri, and so are not used as a major trade item.  They were locally available, though, which is why they were used for creating the first death warriors.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #16: Regents of the Neverborn

The Yadji, their neighbours call them.  In 1618, the Yadji Empire is the most populous nation in all of Australasia; two and a half million people live under its rule.  Its dominions include a variety of peoples; the empire is named not after its inhabitants, but for the family name of its ruling dynasty.  However, the core ethnicity of the Yadji Empire is the oldest sedentary people in Australasia, the Junditmara, and it was among them that the empire began its growth.

--

The Yadji Empire emerged out of the disintegration of its feudal predecessor, the Empire of the Lake.  The old Lords of the Lake had exercised only nominal authority for centuries, and the head of the Yadji family was one of the otjima [ruling feudal lords] who controlled one of many realms.  While most of the otjima realms were becoming ever more fragmented, the Yadji were one of three otjima families who became significantly more powerful during the twelfth century.

The Empire of the Lake, already in decline, was devastated by the arrival of Australia’s worst native epidemic disease, Marnitja.  The first epidemic swept through imperial territory in 1208-10, killing approximately one person in five, and the disease returned in a fresh epidemic a generation later (1238-40).  The death toll from these epidemics produced major social and religious upheaval, including setting off a long period of internecine warfare amongst the surviving otjima.

The Yadji were the most successful otjima family to take advantage of this period of warfare.  Under Ouyamunna Yadji, who died during the later stages of the first epidemic, and then his brother Wanminong, they launched an aggressive program of military expansion.  Ouyamunna created a new caste of warriors who had survived the first stage of Marnitja, and who were waiting uncertainly to know whether they would survive the second stage.  In battle, these warriors worked themselves into a frenzied rage, and helped Ouyamunna win a series of battles and subdue his immediate neighbours.

Most of the death warriors died from the fevered delirium or in battle.  Some survived the intensive period of battles in the first year, and it gradually became apparent that they would not be consumed by the Waiting Death.  Many of the survivors abandoned the death warrior cult at this stage.  A few remained in the cult, motivated by the immediate prestige of being raised to a military caste where they had previously been excluded, and by the prospect of a glorious death in battle ensuring that they had a good afterlife.

The surviving death warriors created a new social institution, and they recruited new members from men who were dispossessed or displaced by the internecine warfare of the period.  The few men who joined the new elite cult of death warriors shaved their hair and stained most of their faces with white dye, carefully applied to give the impression of a skull staring back at anyone they faced.  Under Wanminong (1210-1227) and his son Yutapina (1227-1255), the death warriors were used as shock troops, normally held in reserve during the first stages of a battle, and then used to turn the tide or break the enemy line at a crucial moment.  They were never very numerous, but their presence was felt on many a battlefield as the Yadji expanded their rule.

The Yadji were the most successful otjima family who expanded during this period, but they were not alone.  Two other families, the Euyanee and the Lyawai, had been increasing in prominence before the Marnitja epidemic, and they also gained territory during its bloody aftermath.  The Yadji gained control of much of eastern and south-eastern Junditmara territory, the Euyanee consolidated their power in the south-west, and the Lyawai controlled much of the north.

Between them, the three families controlled about a third of Junditmara territory by 1220.  After this, while the internecine warfare continued, their expansion was largely halted, due to a shortage of warriors, and the difficulty of controlling so many new subjects.  Many of the smaller otjima families continued fighting amongst themselves for longer, although over time many of them banded together to oppose the great three families, or entered into tacit alliances with one side or another.

The second Marnitja epidemic swept through the Junditmara lands in 1230-40, and was almost as deadly as the first, killing about sixteen percent of the non-immune population.  The overall death toll was lower than the first epidemic, since many of the older generation were immune, and because the total Junditmara population had still not recovered.  Still, the social disruption was immense, and the Lord of the Lake [Emperor] took the unprecedented step of publicly asking for the otjima to show restraint and calm against their fellow Junditmara.

He was ignored, of course.

All three of the great families made fresh bids for expansion during this time, as did some ambitious lesser otjima.  Unlike the previous generation of warfare, though, this new round of internecine fighting saw relatively few otjima families conquered.  The lesser otjima were much more inclined to side with each other and resist the advances of the Euyanee and the Lyawai.  In this endeavour, they found support from the Yadji.  For Yutapina Yadji did not seek to conquer his fellow otjima.  When he did fight wars against Junditmara, they were defensive wars to protect his neighbours from the Euyanee and the Lyawai, or their supporters.

Instead, under Yutapina, the Yadji turned their attention outward, pushing into non-Junditmara lands.  They conquered the surviving remnants of the Tjunini along the shore of the Narrow Sea [Bass Strait], and began to expand amongst the Giratji to the east.  Here, they had far more success than anyone else had expected; perhaps even Yutapina himself, although history does not record that.  The Giratji had internal struggles of their own, due to similar problems with Marnitja.  The combination of death warriors and disciplined regular troops proved to be irresistible.  Their greatest accomplishment was in 1251, when they captured the gold mines around Nurrot [Ballarat].

By Yutapina’s death in 1255, the Yadji had more than tripled the size of their territory, although that included much of the thinly-populated Wurrung Mountains [Otway Ranges].  While they had no meaningful census records, certainly close to half their population were non-Junditmara.  By comparison, their two main rival otjima families had gained only limited territory.  The Euyanee made an attempt to emulate the Yadji’s external conquests amongst the Tiwarang to the south-west of Junditmara territory, but they had only limited success.  The Yadji were now clearly the most successful otjima family.

With their new conquests, the Yadji were no longer a purely Junditmara society.  They had to make new accommodations in terms of religion and social organisation, since their old institutions would no longer serve them.  They started to rework the fabric of their society into a new form which drew from the old Junditmara social codes, but which had many new features.

Even under Yutapina, they had already started to change the old religious systems.  Aided by the many apocalyptic beliefs which were emerging at the time, the Yadji created a new religious system which adapted the old beliefs into a form which suited their rule.  Yutapina and his heirs created a new priesthood, with temples at the centre of every community, and who preached of the new faith where the ruling Yadji was the Regent of the Neverborn, and everyone else his subjects.

The Yadji also started to create a strict social hierarchy which was even more rigid than the old Junditmara social codes.  Yutapina is reported to have said, “My lands have a place for everyone, and everyone is in their place.”  In time, the Yadji rulers would decide that the old briyuna warrior caste did not fit into this scheme, since they were loyal to their local otjima and usually not to the ruling Yadji.  They would eventually disband the briyuna.

With the new religion and social system they were creating, the Yadji did not fit into the old feudal system of the Empire of the Lake.  It made little sense for their rulers to acknowledge the nominal authority of the Lord of the Lake when they claimed divine backing for their own rule.  The formal break came in 1255, with the death of Yutapina Yadji.  His son Kwarrawa chose to mark his accession in a ceremony where he was ritually married to Lake Kirunmara, rather than paying homage to the distant Emperor.  The Yadji would date the creation of their own empire from this moment.

The Empire of the Lake persisted for a few decades longer, but after 1255 it could no longer be considered even a nominal nation.  The real power had always been in the hands of the otjima, and now it was being concentrated in the three most prominent families.  The lesser otjima started to formally align themselves with the Yadji, Euyanee or the Lyawai, or were conquered by them.  The last Lord of the Lake died in 1289 from the third major Marnitja epidemic to hit the Junditmara in the same century, and he was never replaced.  By then, virtually all of the Junditmara were either directly ruled by one of the three great families, or their local otjima were effective vassals of one of the three.

In time, they would all be ruled by the Yadji.

--

Ouyamunna Yadji, the ruler who created the death warriors, is said to have believed that they would ensure he had a legacy which would be remembered.  In truth, four centuries later, few men remember him, but they have not forgotten the death warriors he created.  The death warriors have become an elite few recruited from amongst those who have limited prospects, and who embrace the opportunity for glorious death in battle.  The Yadji still use these frenzied warriors as shock troops in their armies, and they have won many a battle.  Under their aegis, the Yadji have become the most populous empire on the continent.

In 1618, the Yadji rule over an empire which they sometimes call the Regency of the Neverborn, and at other times they call Durigal, the Land of the Five Directions.  For like many other peoples around the world, the Junditmara perceive five cardinal directions, not four.  As well as the more familiar north, east, south and west, they also describe a “centre” direction, the point of origin.  Within the Yadji lands, the centre is always Kirunmara [Terang], their capital.  All directions within the Yadji lands are given in relation to Kirunmara itself; a man might say that he is travelling “north of the centre” or “south of the centre.”

From west to east, the Land of the Five Directions extends approximately from the mouth of the Nyalananga [River Murray] and includes all of the coast as far as the River Gunawan [Snowy River].  Its northern border is usually near the Spine [Great Dividing Range].  Some of these borders are fluid; regular warfare with its northern neighbours, particularly Tjibarr, means that frontiers are contested in the north and northwest.  For the rest, Yadji rule is relatively secure, apart from some occasional rebellions over religion, tribute, or language.

The Land of the Five Directions is well-populated, with several large cities and a host of smaller towns and villages.  The Yadji divide their lands into four provinces, which roughly correspond to the old ethnic divisions at the time of Yadji conquest.  The Red Country stretches from the Nyalananga to just west of Gurndjit [Portland], and its old inhabitants were two Gunnagalic-speaking peoples, the Yadilli and Tiwarang.  The borders of the Red Country are the most fluid in the Land, sometimes advancing with military expansion, and sometimes withdrawing due to revolts among conquered peoples or victories by Tjibarr.

The Lake Country is the most populous province; it includes the old Junditmara lands, and some parts of the more contested northerly regions inhabited by the Yotjuwal people.  Along the coast, it stretches from Gurndjit to Jerang [Lorne], although its inland boundary is more restricted, and runs generally north-west from Jerang.

The Golden Country consists mostly of the old Giratji lands, although its northern border sometimes includes much of the Yotjuwal lands, except when those areas revolt or are captured by Tjibarr or Gutjanal.  The Golden Country includes the gold mines around Nurrot and sometimes those around Djawrit [Bendigo], although the latter mines are sometimes controlled by one of the northern kingdoms.  The Golden Country stretches from the border with the Lake Country east as far as Kakararra [Koo Wee Rup].

The White Country is the easternmost province, stretching from Kakararra to the edge of Yadji-claimed territory.  Its eastern borders are vaguely defined, because the Yadji claim more territory than they have settled, but their effective line of control is along the lower River Gunawan.  The easternmost city of any size is Elligal [Orbost].  Beyond these boundaries lies rugged, difficult to farm territory where the Yadji sometimes raid but do not control.  The White Country is mostly inhabited by the Kurnawal, who make reluctant imperial subjects, but who have been largely quiet for the last half-century.

--

While the Yadji rule subjects of a great many languages and religions, they have done their best to centralise their whole empire.  Based on their inherited Junditmara social codes, they seek to create a strict sense of local community and common religion, and to impose a broader sense of hierarchy where everyone has their place under the Regent.

Every Yadji city and town worthy of the name has at least one temple at its heart.  The temples are the grandest part of each city; built of the strongest stone available in any given area, and deliberately constructed so as to appear larger than life.  The temple is the centre of all aspects of daily life.  Religious rituals are only one part of that control.  Each temple governs all aspects of daily life for the town and the surrounding community, from telling the farmers when and where to work the fields, overseeing hunting and fishing, controlling the building and maintenance of waterworks, giving approval to new buildings, approving or rejecting marriages, overseeing the activities of the weavers and craftsmen, and collecting the proceeds of the harvest.  Every temple has attached storehouses where the bulk of the harvest can be retained, including storage for bad years.  It is considered very poor practice for any temple to have less than four years stored food available in case drought, bushfires, or pests ruin the harvest.

In their religious practices, the Yadji have created a new religion blended out of some of the older Junditmara beliefs and the apocalyptic teachings popularised after the Marnitja epidemics of the thirteenth century A.D.  They teach that the first being was the Earth Mother, and the warmth of her body was the only heat in an otherwise cold and empty cosmos.  In time, she gave birth to a son, who was known as the Firstborn.  The Firstborn served and loved the Earth Mother, until he found out that she was with child.  Jealous that he would have to share his mother’s affection, the Firstborn stabbed her through the heart.

As she lay dying, the Earth Mother plucked out her eyes so that she would not have to look upon the son who had betrayed her.  One eye she hurled into the sky, where it would circle the world and act as a mirror to reflect the warmth of the earth.  Her other eye shattered with tears; the largest shard became the moon, the smaller shards became the stars.

With her dying breath, the Earth Mother cursed the Firstborn to be trapped in eternal darkness and cold.  Her blood spilled over her body, creating the mortal world and all of its inhabitants.  The warmth of her blood meant that things would always grow, but the Firstborn could not endure the heat for long.  He was driven from the surface of the world, out into the darkness of the night.  (Hence his alternative title, the Lord of the Night).  Here he waits still, waiting and watching.  Whenever someone dies, he or one of his servants will descend to the surface of the earth to try to claim the spirit of the recently deceased.  The deceased will have to defeat the Firstborn or his servants, or be carried up into the darkness of the night to become another servant.  Thus, the Yadji say that one someone has died, he has “gone to fight his Last Battle.”

However, while the Firstborn succeeded in killing his mother, he did not kill the child she was carrying.  That as yet unborn being still lives, trapped within the flesh of the earth.  He is the Neverborn, the true loyal son of the Earth Mother, who waits yet within the warmth of the earth.  He is the one who will be born someday to fight his elder brother, and that day will be the changing of the world.  All who have died and who won their own last battles wait with him, and will be called to fight at this, the Cleansing, when the universe will be remade.

This, the Yadji teach, is the purpose of the world: to live one’s own life in preparation for the world that is to come.  They recognise only three deities, the dead Earth Mother, and her two sons, the Firstborn who is scorned, and the Neverborn who is loyal.  They also recognise a number of other beings who play a role in the day-to-day world, who are servants of one of the Sons, but they do not view them as gods.  Only the Neverborn should be worshipped, since he is pure and steadfast, and the Earth Mother should be honoured and remembered.

To the Yadji, religion is meant to be a unifying force, and indeed many of their subjects have converted to this belief.  Not all have done so, though, and religious unrest continues to trouble their empire at times, particularly amongst the Kurnawal in the east.  Those peoples who live near the north-western borders are also often more reluctant to follow the Yadji faith completely; they still cling to some of their older beliefs or the teachings of the Good Man [ie Plirism].

Some Regents enforce religion more strictly, and others care little about the substance of others’ beliefs provided that they obey.  The current Regent, Boringa Yadji, worries very little about what his people believe.  He has concerns of his own; partly staying awake when his generals argue about how best to solve the perennial border wars with the northern kingdoms, and partly how to convince his pet rock to talk.  His senior priests have never bothered to dissuade him from his efforts to attain this difficult goal; after all, while the Regent is incommunicado, they can speak for him to the outside world, and this suits them well enough.  If he progresses to the stage where he starts to drool too obviously at public audiences, well, they will deal with that problem when it comes.  It is a crime beyond hope of atonement to spill the blood of any member of the Yadji family, let alone the Regent, but they will find a solution.

--

The temples control most aspects of life within the Yadji realm, but nowhere is their organisation more significant than their oversight of waterworks and aquaculture.  This is the Junditmara’s most ancient technology; they have developed it to a level unsurpassed anywhere else on the continent and, in some ways, anywhere else on the globe.

Not everywhere in Yadji lands is suitable for waterworks.  However, anywhere that geography, rainfall, and water flow permits, the Yadji will have sculpted the land itself to suit their waterworks, creating the swamps, weirs, ponds and lakes which are their joy.

The ancient Junditmara developed their system of aquaculture into the basis of the first sedentary culture on the continent.  It relied on the short-finned eel (Anguilla australis), a species which migrates between fresh and salt water depending on age.  Mature short-finned eels breed far out to sea, and the young elvers return to freshwater rivers where they will swim far upland in search of a home territory.  The elvers can even leave water for short periods, traversing damp ground in pursuit of fresh territory.  Eventually, the elvers find a home range – a stretch of river, a lake, a pond, or a swamp – and establish themselves there.  They feed on almost anything they can catch – other fish, frogs, invertebrates – and slowly grow to maturity.  The eels are remarkably tolerant of changing environments, tolerating high and low temperatures, murky waters, low oxygen, and going into a torpor state if conditions are poor.  The mature eels can reach a substantial size (over 6kg for female eels), and will eventually migrate back downriver to the sea to repeat the process.

Or the eels try to, anyway.

The early Junditmara system of aquaculture was designed to maximise the available habitat for short-finned eels to live and reach maturity, and then trap them when they had reached a decent size.  They did this by creating ponds, swamps and lakes for the eels to live while they grew.  This involved not just the occasional pond or lake, but long series of ponds with connected waterways, each with enough water to support one or more eels.  The Junditmara reshaped the land to suit their needs, using weirs and dams to trap sufficient volumes of water, and creating a myriad array of canals and trenches to connect the ponds and lakes to each other and eventually to the rivers and the sea.  Their lands were crisscrossed by an immense network of these canals, all carefully maintained to allow eels to migrate up the rivers.

Sometimes the Junditmara even trapped young elvers, transported them upriver, and released them into suitable habitats for them to grow to a mature size.  Their entire system was designed to allow the eels to grow to their maximum size, then trap them before they could migrate back downriver.  The Junditmara made woven eel traps and positioned them at well-chosen points along the weirs and dam walls, so that they would trap larger eels when they tried to swim back downriver, but would still allow smaller eels to pass through.

The early Junditmara built their entire culture around farming eels, harvesting edible water plants, and catching waterbirds who fed off the abundance of their waterworks.  When they received agriculture from Gunnagalic migrants, the Junditmara were no longer completely reliant on eel meat to feed their population.  Still, they never lost their knowledge of aquaculture, and they built larger and more complex waterworks wherever geography and their technology permitted them to do so.

The newer Junditmara waterworks are far more diverse in the produce they harvest than the original eel farms, although ‘waterfood’ is still a very high-status commodity.  Many of the expanded waterworks are too far upriver to obtain a decent supply of eels; sometimes because of the distance itself, sometimes because most of the elvers become established in suitable habitats created by communities further downriver.

The Junditmara have solved this by farming a much greater variety of fish and other watery denizens.  They create a series of watery habitats of many depths to suit particular species, and allow fish to migrate between these ponds depending on their habitats.  The shallowest waterworks are kept as swamps with limited depth, but where edible reeds and other plants grow in abundance.  Deeper ponds and lakes host a wide variety of fish species; Australian bass, silver perch, river blackfish, and eel-tailed catfish are among the most common.

Some smaller ponds are maintained simply to breed freshwater prawns and other invertebrates to be used as bait by Junditmara fishermen.  For some fish species, especially river blackfish, the Junditmara breed them in special ponds and then transport the young fry to stock larger lakes and wetlands.  They also keep separate ponds where they breed freshwater crayfish as a luxury food; these invertebrates are slow-growing but are considered extremely tasty.  A few Junditmara farmers have even developed farming methods for freshwater mussels (Alathyria and Cucumerunio species), which are treasured not just as sources of food, but because they occasionally produce freshwater pearls.

The Junditmara have amassed a thorough knowledge which habitats suit the breeding and living requirements of the many fish species in their country.  Some fish prefer locations with underwater cover, so the Junditmara ensure that suitable logs, rocky overhangs, debris, or other places of concealment are available for those species.  Some fish will only spawn in flooded backwaters of small streams, and the Junditmara hold some water back in dams to flood in the early spring when those fish breed.  Many fish migrate regularly throughout their lifecycle, and unlike the engineers who would dam these rivers in another history, the Junditmara make sure that their weirs and dams still allow enough waterflow for these fish to migrate up and downstream as they need.

As part of their aquaculture, the Junditmara also learned much more about how to work with water, stone and metal.  They have never developed anything approximating scientific investigation or philosophical inquiry, unlike the classical Greeks who first started to use mathematics to calculate the shape of the world, of mechanics, and hydraulics.  Still, the Junditmara have a long history of experimentation and development of solutions by trial and error.  This is not a quick process; there have been many errors and many trials.  But slowly, the Junditmara and their Yadji successors have developed a remarkable corpus of knowledge of hydraulics and of engineering as it is applied to the construction of water-related features.

Junditmara engineers have become experts at controlling the movement of water.  They know how to build very good dams and weirs.  By trial and error, they have developed arch dams whose curving structure allows them to build very strong dams while using less stone.  Their engineers do not quite understand the principles of forces and calculations and stresses, but they know that the method works.  Likewise, they have learnt how to build gravity dams, carefully balanced to ensure that they do not overturn under water pressure.  Their engineers have also learned how to build cofferdams to keep a chosen area dry while they are building more permanent dams.  They know how to build levees against floods or to keep chosen areas dry even if surrounded by waterworks.  Around larger river systems, they build networks of levees, flood channels, and secondary dams to trap floodwaters for later use.

On a smaller scale, Junditmara engineers have discovered how to control water for other uses.   They use reservoirs and aqueducts to supply drinking water to their towns and cities.  Like their neighbours in the Nyalananga kingdoms, they understand the usefulness of plumbing, but they apply it much more widely.  Most Junditmara houses have plumbing connected to sewer systems, and the human waste is collected for fertiliser and other uses.  In the temples and the houses of the upper classes, they have flush toilets with a carefully-shaped fill valve which can fill the water tanks without overflowing [1].

The Junditmara engineers have even developed mechanical means of shifting water, thanks to their discovery of screwpumps [Archimedes screw].  They discovered a primitive version of this device more or less by accident, but they have improved its design over the centuries.  All of their screwpumps are hand-powered devices; the most typical use is to move water from low-lying ponds into higher ponds as part of maintaining their waterworks.  They also make some use of screwpumps to irrigate elevated gardens, drain local flooding, and maintain watery features of their major cities.

--

The practice of aquaculture is the most obvious example, but everything in Yadji daily life revolves around the temples and their dictates.  Trade, farming, craftsmanship, and everything else is in one way or another dictated by the reigning priests, who exercise the will of the Regent.  In many ways, this is a continuation of the old Junditmara tradition, where their chiefs or other local headmen oversaw their daily lives.  The Yadji rulers have applied the same principles, although priests are usually appointed by the Regent or his senior advisers.  There is a deliberate policy of moving them between temples throughout their lives, to limit their opportunities to build up a personal power base in any particular region.

Trade and farming, and many of the other parts of Yadji life, have been eased by the Junditmara invention of what was for them a revolutionary device: the wheel.  For many centuries the peoples of this isolated continent had never invented this device; perhaps for want of an inventor, perhaps because with few beasts of burden, it would not benefit them as much.  For so long, transportation relied on sleds, travois and other means, rather than the wheel.  In the last few centuries, however, the Junditmara adapted their existing potter’s wheel into a form which worked upright – and which revolutionised their lives.

The Yadji have applied the wheel to several uses.  While they are still hindered by a lack of any large beasts of burden, they have converted their old transport vehicles into carts or other wheeled forms pulled by people or by teams of dogs.  These are used in their larger cities to transport people and goods.  They are also used along the royal roads.  The Yadji road network is not as extensive as some other peoples on the continent, but most of their main cities are connected.  There are two royal roads which start at their westernmost outpost on the Bitter Lake [Lake Alexandrina], with one running near the coast and the other in the northern regions, converging at Duniradj [Melbourne], then dividing again as they run east, and finally converging at the easternmost Yadji outpost at Elligal.  The Yadji also use small hand carts to help with their farming, and this has been a substantial boost to their agricultural productivity.

Yadji productivity would no doubt have been improved in many other areas if they found out how to apply wheels to them.  Textiles, for instance, would be easier to weave if they had developed the spinning wheel.  No-one has found out how to do this, and the Yadji rely instead on the ancient technology of the spindle for weaving.  Still, elaborately-woven textiles were a Junditmara specialty for centuries, and the Yadji have only expanded their use.

For textiles, the Yadji have only a few basic fibres to work from, but they put them to many uses.  Their basic fibre is the ubiquitous crop, native flax, whose fibres they work into a variety of forms of linen and other textiles.

For higher-status textiles, they use animal fibres.  Dog hairs, to be exact.  The Junditmara have bred white, long-haired dogs whose fur is thick enough to be turned into a kind of wool.  These fleece dogs are carefully maintained as separate breeds which do not have contact with other dogs; the largest breeding populations are maintained on the personal estates of the Regent.  The dogs are fed mostly on eel and other fish meat gathered from their waterworks, and they are shorn every year to produce fleeces and yarns used for high-quality textiles.

The most precious fibres of all are threads of silver or gold.  These metals are under strict royal monopoly, and much of the material collected from the mines is spun into thread and woven into the clothing of the imperial family or very senior priests.

From these few fibres, the Yadji have created a myriad variety of textiles, to serve the many needs of their hierarchical society.  The fundamentals of their clothing are quite simple.  Men wear a sack-like tunic with a hole for the head and two more for the arms, and which usually reach to their knees.  Women wear a sleeveless dress held in at the waist with a patterned sash.  Both sexes wear the anjumi, a kind of textile headband which has elaborately-woven patterns which indicate a person’s home region and their social rank.

Indeed, while the basic aspects of clothing are similar for peoples of all ranks, the Yadji use many colours and patterns to indicate status.  They use many dyes, some produced from local plants, some imported by the Islanders or from the northern kingdoms, and they use these to mark status.  The patterns on a person’s anjumi are an immediate indication of their rank, role in society, and the region where they live.  Amongst those of higher status, there are more elaborate indications of status; thread or small plates of silver and gold, lustrous shells, pearls, feathers from parrots and other birds, and other markers to show the wealth and standing of their wearer.  It is said amongst the Yadji that even if every person in their realm was gathered into one place, it would still be possible to tell where each person was from, and their rank.

The varieties of clothing which the Yadji wear are only the most visible sign of the careful organisation of their society.  For where it has been said that three Gunnagal cannot agree about anything, the Yadji and their Junditmara ancestors have always been a regimented society.  The priests act as local rulers, within the broad expectations of the Regent and his senior priests at Kirunmara.  To enforce their will, they can rely on both religious authority and the carefully-maintained records of a literate society.  For the Yadji make extensive use of writing, using a script derived from the ancient Gunnagalic script.  They have never developed any use for clay tablets as their northern neighbours used; instead, they use parchment made from emu hide, and a form of paper made from the boiled inner bark of wattle-trees.  Literacy is largely confined to the priestly class and a few aristocrats, but that is sufficient to allow careful administration of the many lands under the control of the Regent.

The same desire for control means that the old military structure of the briyuna has been completely removed.  The briyuna were a hereditary class of warriors who were loyal to their local otjima, but no further.  The reigning Yadji have no tolerance for warriors whose allegiance is not to the Regent, and the briyuna who survived the conquest of the other Junditmara lands were retired.

In their place, the Yadji developed a new military order based on the careful recruitment of loyal soldiers.  Military discipline is strong, with Yadji units very good at fighting alongside each other.  They have also developed good methods for coordinating movements between units, using a combination of banners, drums and bugle-like horns.

The spread of ironworking has also revolutionised their military tactics.  The Yadji most commonly use a form of scale armour, which they favour as cheaper to produce than the mail which is preferred by their rivals in the northern kingdoms.  Part of their preference for scale armour is also because it is easier to decorate; the old Junditmara love of ornamentation lives on in the Yadji military.  High-ranking officers in Yadji armies are given sets of ceremonial armour, not just the practical varieties.  Designs of gold are common in ceremonial armour, for one of the useful properties of iron is that gold designs show more prominently than on the old bronze armour.

Still, for all that the Yadji have changed, the original ethos of the briyuna has not been lost.  Within the Regency’s borders, they no longer exist as a separate warrior caste, but many of the retired briyuna took up priestly or related administrative roles in the expanding Yadji realm.  Their old warrior code lives on in songs, epics, and chronicles, becoming increasingly mythologised and romanticised, and the ruling Yadji have tolerated this development.  The code of the briyuna is still seen as the standard by which a proper Yadji gentleman should conduct himself, even if this standard is more honoured in the breach than the observance.

As for the briyuna themselves, they did not completely vanish when the Yadji dissolved their order.  Some of the briyuna refused to accept retirement, and fled beyond the borders of the Regency.  A few went to the northern kingdoms, but the largest group fled to the Kaoma, another non-Gunnagalic people who live in the highlands beyond the Regency’s eastern border.  There, the briyuna have become a warrior caste amongst the Kaoma and their neighbouring Nguril, and they still preserve much of their old code and lifestyle.  They have not forgotten their origins, and they still mistrust the Yadji who evicted them from their old homelands.

--

One of the perennial questions which has vexed linguists and sociologists is whether language shapes society, or society shapes language.  Or, indeed, whether both are true at once.

When they come to study the Yadji, they will find a rich source for further arguments.  For the Junditmara who form the core of the Regency’s dominions have developed their own extremely complex social rules regarding their interactions with each other.  The rules dictate who can speak to whom, the required courtesies and protocols needed when people of different status meet, what subjects can be discussed with which people, and a myriad of other intricacies.  The Junditmara are status-conscious in a way which few other peoples on the globe would recognise.

The intricacies of Junditmara social codes are reflected in their language.  All Junditmara pronouns have six different forms, which can be roughly translated as dominant, submissive, masculine, feminine, familiar, and neutral.  Their language also uses a variety of affixes which are added to individual names and titles, and which carry a similar function to the pronouns.

Each of these forms indicates the relationship between the speakers.  Dominant and submissive are broadly used to indicate the relative social status of each of the speakers.  Using the dominant form with a person of higher rank is a major social faux pas at best, and is usually treated as a grave insult.  These two forms can also serve other functions, such as when two people of similar rank are arguing, one might use the submissive form of “you” in a form such as “I agree with you” to concede the argument.

The masculine and feminine forms have the fundamental purpose of indicating the gender of the person being referred to, but the customs regarding their use also reflect social rules amongst the Junditmara.  When speaking to a person of higher social status, a person will normally use the submissive form rather than a masculine or feminine form.  When speaking to a person of roughly equal social status, the masculine or feminine form is typically the form used.  When speaking to a person of lower status, a high-status speaker may choose to use the dominant forms, which indicates a greater degree of formality, or the masculine or feminine form, which indicates a less formal meeting.  As with all aspects of Junditmara society, these forms can be used in other ways, such as if a group of soldiers wished to condemn another soldier for supposed unmanly or cowardly behaviour, they would typically refer to him using a feminine form.

The familiar and neutral forms are more restricted in their usage.  The familiar form is normally used only for relatives or close friends, and indicates that the relationship between the two people is so well-established that questions of status will never arise [2].  It sometimes has other uses, such as being used with someone who is clearly not on familiar terms, which indicates either irony or extreme disrespect.  The neutral form is used mostly in ambiguous situations where people have only just met and are not sure of each other’s status, or a situation where someone of lower status temporarily needs to be treated as being of equal status.  Some subsets of society also use the neutral form if they want to indicate that they are completely equal.  For instance, amongst soldiers, men of the same rank are expected to refer to each other using the neutral form, rather than the masculine form.

The intricacies of Junditmara language extend to many of their other words.  Most of their common verbs have two different flavours, which can be described as directive or suggestive.  Directive means that what is said is a command, while the other indicates a request or a preference.  “Come here” if said in a directive flavour would have a rather different impression upon the listener than if it were said in a suggestive flavour.

While the intricacies of the Junditmara language are not directly matched in that of the other peoples who make up the Yadji Empire, some of their phrases and meanings are slowly diffusing amongst the other peoples.  For the Junditmara language is the effective language of government amongst most of the Regency; even if priests speak a local language as well, they will be literate mostly in the Junditmara tongue.  This is one of the many methods which the reigning Yadji use to centralise control over the dominions.  Religion, however, remains the most important aspect of their government.  Up until the year 1618, this has been very effective in maintaining their rule over a disparate group of peoples.  As that year draws to a close, however, a new era is preparing, one in which all of the social institutions of the Yadji will be sorely tested...

--

[1] This is a similar type of mechanism to the ballcock which would historically be developed in the nineteenth century.

[2] The familiar form is used in approximately the same manner as “first name terms,” back in a time when being on first name terms actually meant something more meaningful than having said hello.  Or the distinction between tu and vous in French (or similar forms in many other languages).

--

Lands of Red and Gold #17: The Good Man

In Australia, the driest of inhabited continents, water means life.  Droughts are common, and even when rain does fall, it often does so in such abundance that it causes floods.  The irregularity of this rain is most pronounced in the interior, and naturally enough most of the inhabitants of the continent live nearer the coast.  The outback – the red heart of the continent – is nearly devoid of water, and nearly devoid of human life.

In eastern Australia, the frontier between the outback and the settled districts is traditionally the River Darling.  Rising in the mountain ranges of southern Queensland, the Darling drains a large part of the continent before emptying into the River Murray.  The Darling is an extremely irregular river, often drying up completely, and at other times flooding so prodigiously that the waters can take six months to recede.  Nonetheless, it became an important transport route during the early days of European settlement of Australia.

Beyond the Darling lies the red heart, the outback.  The nearest part of this is called the Channel Country, a series of ancient flood plains marked by the courses of many dried up rivers.  Rain seldom falls here, but when it does, it floods along these channels and drains into Lake Eyre, the largest lake in Australia, which has no outlet to the sea.  Most of the time, Lake Eyre is a flat, dry salt plain, but sometimes the rains from distant cyclones or monsoons fill the lake.  When it does, fish spawn in great abundance, and waterbirds gather from across the vast interior to feed and breed by the shores.  The lake dries out soon enough, when the fish die, the waterbirds move on, and its bed reverts to a salt plain.

In the cyclically dry country beyond the Darling, Europeans found relatively little to interest them.  Some rich mineral lodes have been mined, and sheep and cattle graze in stations (farms) which need very large areas to support their herds on the sparse vegetation, but otherwise the country is mostly empty.

In allohistorical Australia, the same river is called the Anedeli.  To the Gunnagalic peoples who developed agriculture along the Nyalananga [River Murray], the Anedeli was for a very long time considered a frontier.  The lower reaches of the Anedeli drained through country where the rainfall was extremely limited and agriculture almost impossible.  In time, migrants used the Anedeli as a transportation route, following its course to the upper reaches.  Here, they found more fertile country and a variety of mineral wealth – especially tin – which meant that the Anedeli became a much more important transportation route.

As Gunnagalic civilization developed over the centuries, they came to regard the Anedeli as one of the Five Rivers that watered the known world [1].  An empire arose, Watjubaga, which took its name from the Five Rivers which flowed through the heart of its territory.  Four of those rivers had long-established cities and verdant agriculture and aquaculture along their banks.  The fifth river, the Anedeli, continued to be used primarily as a transportation route, and it marked a frontier rather than a source of life.

To the Gunnagalic peoples, the country beyond the Anedeli was called the Red Lands, the Hot Lands, or the Dry Country.  They did have a few uses for it.  Silver Hill [Broken Hill] gave them a rich source of silver, lead and zinc, and other mines gave them some valuable metals and minerals, especially varieties of ochre which they used for dyes.  They sometimes mined salt and gypsum from the dry lake beds, and collected a few flavourings and fibres from some of the outback plants.  For the most part, though, the Red Lands were a thinly-settled frontier fading into desert which was occupied only by sometimes hostile hunter-gatherer peoples.

Usually.

For the Red Lands had a brief flowering of more reliable agriculture, a time when the Anedeli became not a frontier but a treasured source of water for peoples who lived along its banks.  Thanks to a rare shift in the climate, the rainfall along the lower Anedeli became sufficient to support several substantial cities and a separate kingdom.  This time of flowering would come to an end, with the yams and wattles withering for lack of water and the cities abandoned to the desert.  In that brief time, though, the kingdom beside the Anedeli witnessed the birth of the first evangelical religion on the continent; a new faith which would in time spread far beyond its shores...

--

At the turn of the tenth century AD, during the decline of the Watjubaga Empire, imperial authority was dying outside of the heartland of the Five Rivers.  The Bungudjimay in the northeast had defeated imperial armies and were starting to raid the fringes of the tin and sapphire-producing regions of the north.  In the east, the Patjimunra had just declared their independence from imperial authority.  The Junditmara in the south were rising in perpetual rebellion, and the imperial governors were powerless to stop them.

In the midst of this chaos, it took some time for the imperial administration at Garrkimang [Narrandera] to notice a remarkable shift in the climate.  The lands around the Anedeli had always been dry and barely worth farming.  Yet over the last few decades, the usual winter rains had been heavier than usual, and reached further and further north.  Summers and winters both had grown somewhat cooler, but not intolerably so.  Any minor inconvenience that the colder temperatures caused was more than offset by the prospect of bountiful rains falling year after year [2].

Just after the turn of the century, news reached Garrkimang of another remarkable change.  They knew, of course, of the distant salt bed that they called Papukurdna [Lake Eyre], and of the cycle of refilling and evaporation.  Most of their salt came from smaller dry lakes, but they had sufficient contact with the hunter-gatherer peoples of the interior to hear about this greatest of dry lakes.  Tales from these peoples, and confirmed by ‘civilized’ visitors, confirmed the extraordinary tale that this great lake had filled permanently, or so it seemed.

The years turned, with rebellions and defeats plaguing Watjubaga, yet still visitors reported that the former dry lake remained full.  The heavier winter rains continued over the frontier of the River Anedeli and the Red Lands it bordered.  In time, the existence of these heavier rains came to be seen as the natural state of affairs.  In 912, then-First Speaker [Emperor] Lopitja announced the founding of a new city along the Anedeli, modestly named after himself.  Farmers started to settle the lands around this new city of Lopitja [Wilcannia, New South Wales].  In time, most people forgot that this country had for so long been arid and too hostile to support agriculture [3].

The decades passed, and the Red Lands along the Anedeli became almost as well-populated as any other part of the Five Rivers.  Yams and wattles flourished with the rains, and the expansion into this region gave them access to crops which had not been domesticated further south; bush pears and bush raisins as fruits and flavourings, and trees such as blue-leaved mallee as a spice [4].  They were not able to build artificial wetlands in quite the same way as on the other main rivers, but they did build some artificial lakes which could store Anedeli floodwaters and allow both fishing and irrigation.

Lopitja became a flourishing city, the largest of several along the lower Anedeli, and an important waypoint in the tin trade.  It prospered even as Watjubaga faded; the Empire was first reduced to its heartland of the Five Rivers, then into what was a minor kingdom in all but name.  Lopitja declared its independence in 1080, establishing a nation of its own along the banks of the Anedeli.  It became the capital of one of the several post-Imperial kingdoms which vied to inherit the mantle of the First Speakers’ authority; its main rivals were Gutjanal [Albury-Wodonga], Tjibarr [Swan Hill] and Yigutji [Wagga Wagga].

Lopitja’s favourable position along the Anedeli meant that it controlled the best transportation route for tin from the north.  This was no longer a monopoly, since tin could also be imported from the distant Cider Isle [Tasmania], but it was still a valuable trade good.  It was also close to the mines of Silver Hill, and its control over those lands added to its wealth.

For a brief flowering in the twelfth century, Lopitja was one of the two greatest post-Imperial kingdoms.  Its main rival was Tjibarr, and the two kingdoms fought several wars throughout the century.  Lopitja successfully defended itself during those wars.  What its people did not know, however, was that their era of prominence was limited.  The climate was reverting to its long-term norm of semi-aridity, and Lopitja’s place in the wet would be replaced by a more normal place in the sun – the endless heat of the outback sun, to be more precise.

In that brief time, though, Lopitja produced one man who had ideas which would change the world.

--

August 1145
House of the Spring Flowers
Kantji [Menindee, NSW], Kingdom of Lopitja

Some have called him the Good Man, although he never acknowledges when people speak to him using that title.  Nor does he answer to the name his mother gave him.  What is that but an arbitrary set of syllables?  Some have called him the Teacher, and he will answer to that name, however reluctantly.  He does not want to teach people; he wants to make them teach themselves.

He stands at the double bronze gates that mark the start of the Spiral Garden.  The breeze blows out of the northwest, warming his cheeks with the breath of the endless desert.  The wind carries the distinctive tang of blue-leaved mallee trees, a scent that for now overwhelms the myriad other aromas of the garden beyond these walls.

In the burnished bronze, the Teacher catches a glimpse of himself.  Red-brown skin covers a face which no honest man would call handsome, and which is mercifully blurred in the imperfect reflection of metal.  Wavy hair growing bushy and long on both sides of his face, black streaked with white.  He is turning old, he knows, but that is all part of the Path on which any man finds himself, willing or not.  It matters not what happens to a man, just how he bears himself while events happen.

The image in the burnished bronze reminds him, although he already knows, that his clothing is no different to that worn by any other gentleman of substance in the kingdom.  It has to be.  Rightly or wrongly, no-one would listen to a poor teacher, any more than they would seek treatment from a deformed doctor.  So he wears the same black-collared tjiming which any high-status man would wear, fitting loose around his neck, long sleeves dangling beneath his arms, and the main bulk of the garment wrapped twice around his torso and held in place with an opal-studded sash, while the hem just covers his knees.  Clothes are merely appearance, not substance, but a wise man knows when appearances matter.

Four other men cluster behind him, dressed in similar styles although without the ornateness of opals and sapphires.  They think that he has brought them to the House of the Spring Flowers to reveal to them some great truth that is concealed within these walls of stone and timber and vegetation.

So, in a way, he is.  But it is nothing like what they will be expecting.  The carefully crafted forms of the House were built on a spot where, it is said, the Rainbow Serpent rested on his path down the Anedeli.  This is meant to be a place of power, a place where a man can stand and feel himself growing closer to the Evertime.  The gardens, the pools, the three fountains, are all meant to inspire that sense of serenity.

If only truth were so simple to find that a man could step in here and attain it!

He gestures, and three of the four would-be acolytes move to open the gates.  The fourth man does not move, but keeps chewing on a lump of kunduri.  That man had offered the Teacher another ball of the stimulant a few moments before, and did not seem to understand why he declined the offer.  Many men have claimed that using kunduri or other drugs brings a man closer to the Evertime.  For himself, though, he thinks that such drugs merely let the user hear the echoes in his own head.

He leads the men into the Spiral Garden.  He moves at a quicker pace than they will be expecting; he pretends not to notice the occasional mumbles of the would-be acolytes behind him.  The Garden is meant to be contemplated slowly, in a careful progression in ever-decreasing almost-circles until one reaches the centre.

The Teacher strides past the places of contemplation; he ignores the niches set into the walls, or the places where gum trees have been planted to provide shade for men to stand and savour the scenery.  He walks alongside the stream that traces a path along the centre of the spiral, drawing water via underground passages from the Anedeli.  Flowers bloom in a myriad of colours around him, desert flowers from the Red Lands to the far north and west which normally would blossom only in the aftermath of rare desert rains.  Here, with irrigation water available, the flowers bloom according to the command of the gardeners.  There is a lesson there, but not the one which he wants these men to consider today.

He leads them through almost all the Garden, then stops while they are not yet in sight of the central pond, although the sacred bunya trees [5] around that pond grow high enough that they show over the walls.  When he stops, it is not to draw their attention to any of the arrangements of plants, but to speak to a gardener’s assistant who is methodically pruning one of the ironwood [Casuarina] trees.

The assistant pauses in his labour and says, “Good to see you, Teacher!  Are you well, my friend?”

The Teacher says, “Yes, Gung, I am well.”  He introduces each of the would-be acolytes in turn.  Each time, the gardener’s assistant gives the same enthusiastic greeting, word for word the same except for the name of the person he is greeting.  The acolytes respond to the enthusiasm that the assistant shows, saying their own greetings in a similar energetic tone.

The Teacher says, “We need to see more of the Garden.  Stay well, Gung.”

The gardener’s assistant says, “You too.  Have a good day, Teacher!”  He offers similar farewells to each of the would-be acolytes, each of them the same except for the name.

The Teacher leads the would-be acolytes a short distance away.  Far enough that they can talk without their voices carrying, but not so far that they lose sight of the gardener’s assistant.  They watch as the assistant returns to his task of pruning the ironwood trees, cheerfully completing each step without supervision.

The Teacher says, “Gung is a man slow of wit, but sincere in his heart.  If we go back and greet him in a few minutes, he will say the same thing as before, and greet each of us warmly, for he knows but little of how to speak.  Yet he does his tasks as the gardeners give them, and will approach all of them in the same manner.”

He pauses, then continues, “So, is this man happier than the king?  The king is burdened with worry, with our enemies in Tjibarr and Garrkimang threatening our borders.  Yet this man knows little, and enjoys much.”

The would-be acolytes nod and murmur in agreement.  “This man is happy, happier even than the king,” the kunduri-chewing acolyte says.

The Teacher says, “So, if this man is happy, then, what makes him happy?  It cannot be wealth, for this man has none.”  As if carelessly, his fingers run over the sapphire-studded bracelet on his wrist.  All of these acolytes know that the Teacher is wealthy, if not quite of the royal family.  “It cannot be praise, for those who work with him neither praise him nor condemn him, but just expect him to work.”

“His joy must come from within, then,” one of the acolytes says.

“So, then, is joy something which comes from within?” the Teacher asks.  “Is it intrinsic to a man, not something which can be granted from without?”

The acolytes nod again.

“Yet if this man were to be punished, condemned, shouted at, would he not feel sorrow?  Would he not be deprived of happiness?”

“Maybe happiness comes from within, while unhappiness comes from without?” the kunduri-chewing acolyte says.

“Perhaps,” the Teacher says.  “Yet if a man is praised, would that not usually make him happy?  If I were to say to you, “I am pleased with you,” would that not grant you a boon of joy?”

“It would be the honour of my day,” the kunduri-chewer says.

“So, then, is joy something which can be found from within, or something which comes from without?”

The Teacher waits, but no-one answers him.

Eventually, he says, “Joy is neither internal nor external; it comes from bringing oneself into harmony with the world around.  It need not even be a choice of enlightenment; a man who perceives as little as our gardeners’ assistant can still be abundantly joyful.  It is the alignment, the convergence of one’s own desires with the present circumstances which matter.  As circumstances change, as lives change, we must strive to keep ourselves aligned; we must make our own essence the balance on which our world shifts.”

--

The man whom allohistory would come to call the Good Man was born sometime around 1080; accounts differ as to whether he was born before or after Lopitja gained its independence.  The place of his birth is recognised to be somewhere near Kantji, although there are several competing claims for the exact location.  He was born into a reasonably wealthy family; his father is reported to have been a dealer in incenses and perfumes.  A plethora of tales describe his life and his teachings, many of them undoubtedly apocryphal, but there is no doubt that in his lifetime he was regarded as a great philosopher, teacher, and visionary.

Certainly, he spoke of the need to bring harmony to the cosmos, and of the Sevenfold Path which was the best means to achieve harmony.  He was presumably a literate man, as most men of his background would have been, but no surviving letters or other writings can be indisputably attributed to him.

After the Good Man’s death in 1151, his disciples squabbled amongst themselves as to his legacy, and produced a variety of writings which purported to describe his teachings and philosophy.  Over the next three decades, most of these disciples settled on a more-or-less accepted account of the Good Man’s life, teachings, and the path which should be followed.  They came to be called Plirites, from a word which can be roughly translated as “(the) Harmony.”  This faith regarded the Good Man as a prophet-philosopher and ideal example of how a person should live, and its beliefs would spread most widely across the continent.

A smaller group of holdouts regarded the Good Man as a semi-divine figure, and over the next century emerged as a distinct sect who called themselves Tjarrling, a name which can be roughly translated as “the Heirs” or perhaps “the True Heirs.”  Opinions differed on both sides of the religious divide as to whether the Tjarrling should be considered a separate religion or a branch of Plirism; broadly speaking, most orthodox Plirites accepted the Tjarrling as misguided adherents of the same faith.

Plirism became the first evangelical religion which the continent had seen.  Its adherents created an organised priesthood, whose emphasis was on the continuity of faith and personal teaching from the Good Man to his disciples and to his priests.  While they had a variety of religious writings, to the orthodox Plirites, these were treated as supplements to the continuity of learning from teacher to disciple to priest.  They taught that following the Sevenfold Path and bringing balance to one’s own desires was the only way to achieve true harmony and concord throughout the cosmos.  Other faiths and beliefs might have some truth, but they were not the whole truth, and so would thus inevitably bring discord.  Only once all peoples followed the Sevenfold Path would there be complete harmony in the cosmos.

Missionaries and acolytes of Plirism spread throughout the Five Rivers and beyond, and met with mixed receptions.  They won a few converts, but the syncretic nature of many of the Gunnagalic beliefs meant that there was considerable resistance to the idea of one true path.

Plirite missionaries had their first major success in 1209, when the new king of Lopitja converted to Plirism, and then in 1214 made it the state religion of his kingdom.  Over the next few decades, the faith became deeply established in the kingdom.  Unfortunately for its adherents, Lopitja itself was dying.  The unusual climatic conditions which sustained the kingdom were fading.  Papukurdna was drying up, and the winter rains were becoming more erratic.  Farmers abandoned their fields, the population declined, and in time the kingdom lost its wars with Tjibarr.  The capital was sacked in 1284, and most of its other cities were abandoned.  Kantji returned to desert, its stone walls and roads now an empty haunt of wind-borne red dust, while the wonders of the Spiral Garden were reclaimed by desert scrubs.

By then, however, Plirism had spread much further.

Within the Five Rivers itself, Plirism never became a majority religion anywhere except the fading Lopitja kingdom.  Some people converted to the religion, and temples were established which remained over the centuries.  Yet the traditional view of religion gradually reasserted itself; the Good Man’s teachings were simply viewed as one path among many.

Orthodox Plirite teachings were brought by missionaries to the lower reaches of the Nyalananga.  They had some success in converting the peoples there, particularly the Yadilli who dwelt south-east of the Nyalananga mouth.  Their most important long-term success, however, came from the establishment of temples on the Island [Kangaroo Island], and the wholesale conversion of the Nangu in 1240.  The Nangu embraced Plirism, and as their trade network grew, the faith spread along with it.

The heterodox Tjarrling sect made little progress within the Five Rivers, but its displaced adherents carried their beliefs to the northern headwaters of the Anedeli.  There, the Butjupa and Yalatji peoples [6] slowly converted to the new faith, and by the seventeenth century it had become almost universal among those peoples.

--

Plirism has many competing schools and interpretations; there are written scriptures, but no universal agreement about what they mean.  Above the level of an individual temple, there is no guiding central authority for the faith, no-one who can make absolute decisions.  Some living priests become regarded as influential authorities who should be consulted, and the writings of some former priests have become the foundation of particular schools of thought.

However, the form which was adopted by the Nangu would be the most influential school of Plirism.  Like all of the schools, it was based on acceptance of the Sevenfold Path which was the core of the Good Man’s teachings.  It also included considerable elements and influences from traditional Gunnagalic religion.  For the Good Man had taken many religious concepts and other aspects of his worldview from the preceding Gunnagalic religions, and some others were inserted into Plirism by his disciples and early converts.

At its core, Plirism views the cosmos as a single connected entity.  The actions of every person and every object are connected; nothing happens in isolation.  There is no such thing as an inanimate object, for everything is seen as having the same “essence,” and both affects and is affected by everything else.  All actions, great or small, good or bad, have their place in the pattern of the cosmos.  Moreover, all actions have consequences; nothing which is done can be said to have no effect on the rest of the world.  The most common analogy which the Good Man taught is of the cosmos being like a pond; anything which was cast into that pond would produce ripples.

According to the Good Man, the foundation of understanding came from recognising the truth of interconnectedness, and the effects of this truth.  It is inevitable that actions will change the world, but the question is whether an action is dandiri (bringing harmony) or waal (bringing discord).  Acting in a way which brings harmony is the foundation of all virtues and good things; acting in a way which brings discord is the foundation of all suffering, even if the influence is not obvious to the casual beholder.

The Good Man taught that the key to maximising harmony was to bring balance to one’s own desires, and align them with the broader cosmos.  This meant that one should follow the Sevenfold Path.  The Path was the only true way to bring oneself into harmony with the cosmos.  Stepping off the Path unbalanced oneself and reduced harmony in the cosmos, which increased discord and suffering.  Other faiths and beliefs might contain some similarities to the Path, and so some aspects of truth, but their correspondence was never perfect.  So, to some degree every other faith increases the suffering and discord in the cosmos.  If everything and everyone acts in harmony, then there will be balance.  That will bring a minimum of suffering, and the maximum of solace.

The Sevenfold Path was divided into seven aspects, each of which should be followed by every person, at least as far as they are able to within their understanding and ability.  The interpretation of these paths was coloured by individual societies and pre-existing religious beliefs, but the names of each of the paths was accepted throughout Plirism.

The first path, the founding path, is the path of harmony.  All people should act in a way which increases harmony, not in a way which causes discord.  There is no universal list of the actions which create discord, but in general harmony can be increased by maintaining standards of courtesy, honesty, and respect for others.  Honesty is not an absolute, at least according to some priests, for a lie can be tolerated when it would be less hurtful.  Theft and taking of other people’s property is condemned unless it is to avoid greater suffering.  Violence is generally to be avoided, but it can become necessary if it is directed against something which would otherwise increase disharmony, such as social unrest, preventing murder or theft, and so on.

The second path is the path of propriety.  This means that each person should act in a manner befitting their station in society; to do otherwise is to cause disharmony.  Princes and slaves both should act as befits their role.  A Nangu axiom restates this path as “to the merchant his profit, to the chief his obedience, to the artisan his craft, to the priest his prayers, and to the worker his duties.”  This includes the implicit assumption that rulers who act in a manner befitting their status should be obeyed, while those who do not do so should be removed.  It also means that workers, labour draftees, slaves and the common classes are expected to obey and serve, not seek to improve their station.  There is an implicit hierarchy in a Plirite society, and there is not much expectation of social mobility in life.  Since Plirism inherited the old Gunnagalic beliefs in eternity and reincarnation, it is expected that people will live in different stations in different lives.

The third path is the path of decisiveness.  This is often restated to mean “no half-actions.”  The principle of balance and harmony means that inaction is often the best course; sometimes doing nothing is the best way to avoid causing discord.  Conversely, when action is required, it is because something has been done to cause disharmony.  In this case, decisive action is required, not half-measures.

For instance, the Plirite principle is that war should not be fought unless there is good reason.  Most commonly, this is because a society is causing discord, or against social unrest.  Such a war should be pursued to its utmost finish.  Enemy soldiers should be hunted down and killed in decisive battles; prisoners should not be taken, quarter should not be given.  Soldiers should not kill those who are not part of the war, but if someone makes himself a part of the war, then he should be killed without compunction.  Likewise, rulers who live according to this path should ignore small slights; there is no need to respond to every complaint and insult.  That would only provoke a cycle of retribution and cause endless discord.  If action is required against an enemy of the realm, though, it should be swift, decisive, and without mercy [7].

The fourth path is the path of prayer.  The Good Man viewed prayer as both a means of personal enlightenment – communing with the Evertime – and as a means of honour, respect and intercession with other beings.  People are expected to pray for intercession from beings of power, such as the myriad of divine beings whose existence was accepted as an inheritance from older religions.  People are also expected to pray to honour and respect both their ancestors and their descendants.  (The inherited view of time means that the distinction between ancestors and descendants is blurred.)

For common people, the orthodox faith has standardised the time of daily prayers as dawn and dusk.  These are called the half-times, when there is balance between day and night, and when prayers are most efficacious.  Other important times for prayer are at the times of the half-moon (both waxing and waning), and especially the equinoxes, which are seen as the focal points of the year.  The orthodox Plirite calendar starts with a great religious festival at the spring equinox, as an ideal time of balance.  Priests are expected to spend much of their lives in prayer, since this will increase harmony and preserve the balance of the cosmos.

The fifth path is the path of charity.  The Good Man taught of the need to support and care for others.  On the Island, the Nangu traditionally interpret this as requiring a donation of a twelfth of their income to support others; other Plirite nations usually just expect generosity and helpfulness rather than a specific amount.  In most cases, this path is followed by donating to the temples, which in turn are expected to support the poor, sick and hungry.  Rulers are likewise expected to be generous; earning wealth is perfectly acceptable, but hoarding it while people starve is not.

The sixth path is the path of acceptance.  The Good Man taught that the cosmos is larger than any individual; sometimes, no matter what a man’s deeds might be, there are larger forces at work which he cannot control.  In this case, while a man should do the best he can, he should not express frustration or condemn himself for things which cannot be changed.  He should simply accept some things as inevitable, abandon futile striving which will only bring about further discord, and focus his attention on those duties which he can perform.  In common practice, this is interpreted to mean avoidance of complaining about outcomes, perceived poor fortune, bad luck, or the like.  It is appropriate to advise others on when their actions may be increasing discord, but not to complain about one’s own status or present condition.

The seventh path is the path of understanding.  The Good Man taught that each person should strive to understand themselves and the cosmos as they really are, not through misunderstandings or illusions.  They should achieve this knowledge both through self-reflection and through instruction from those who have achieved greater understanding.  In common practice, this means that a person should seek the guidance of their parents or other elder relatives to assist in understanding their daily lives.  To understand the broader cosmos, they should seek the guidance of their priests or the written teachings of revered teachers, who can help to build their proper knowledge.  Priests can guide people and help them to recognise the effects of their own actions, and thus better follow all aspects of the Sevenfold Path.

While they are not strictly part of the teachings of the Sevenfold Path, there are also other beliefs which have become integral parts of Plirism.  Most of these beliefs were derived from the traditional Gunnagalic religious milieu.  These include the existence of a great many divine beings, heroic figures, and other spiritual figures which are part of the cosmos.  These can be prayed to, negotiated with, and in some cases consulted to gain greater understanding.  However, the Good Man taught that none of these beings were infallible or all-knowing; they were merely powerful beings.

Likewise, Plirism accepts the idea of the Evertime, of the eternal nature of the cosmos, and of reincarnation.  However, reincarnation has been somewhat reinterpreted.  In traditional Gunnagalic religion, reincarnation could be into a variety of forms, human, animal, or plant.  Plirism recognises only reincarnation in human form, and teaches that people are reborn into different bodies and stations as part of the overall balance of the cosmos.  Reincarnation is not based just on an individual’s own actions, but on the broader principles of harmony and discord.  Everyone will be influenced by the cosmos.

--

In 1618, Plirism is the one multinational faith on the continent.  Some peoples have religions of state, such as the Atjuntja and the Yadji.  There are some traditional syncretic religions which are widespread over some areas, particularly the Five Rivers.

However, Plirism is the one faith which explicitly tries to convert other peoples, and its adherents have slowly become more numerous and more widespread, with even a few converts in Aotearoa [New Zealand].  The Atjuntja kill converts amongst their own subject peoples, the Yadji persecute them, and some other Gunnagalic peoples spurn them.

Plirism is still slowly growing.  This is not least because once a population has become majority Plirite, they are very unlikely to revert to other faiths.  This is part of the Plirite teaching that other religions increase discord and suffering; any would-be converts are discouraged through passive or active means.  Plirite peoples are also inclined to speak out against their own people if they believe that a particular person is not living according to the Path.  After all, anyone who steps off the Path is, in their way, increasing the suffering of others.

Still, after 1618, Plirism will have deal with a religious challenge greater than any which it has so far experienced...

--

[1] The Five Rivers are the Nyalananga [Murray], Anedeli [Darling], Matjidi [Murrumbidgee], Gurrnyal [Lachlan] and Pulanatji [Macquarie].

[2] Bountiful rains by Australian standards, that is.  The rainfall in this period still only averages between 300-400 mm.  It is more reliable than the usual Australian weather, though; droughts have been reduced in both frequency and duration.

[3] This climate shift occurs within the same broad timeframe as the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 900-1300 AD).  Around the North Atlantic, this climatic shift produced generally warmer temperatures.  It lasted for varying time periods and had different effects in other parts of the globe; parts of the tropical Pacific seem to have been cool and dry, as was the Antarctic Peninsula.  In Australia, the weather was affected by a long-term La Niña phenomenon, which produced generally cooler temperatures and increased rainfall.  It is unclear just how much the climate shifted, since climate records in Australia are sparse, but Lake Eyre held permanent water for what seems to have been at least two centuries, and probably longer.  The climate reverted to a drier phase by the end of the Medieval Warm Period, possibly earlier.

[4] Bush pears (Marsdenia australis) and desert raisins (Solanum centrale) are fruits grown on vines and shrubs suited to semi-arid conditions.  Blue-leaved mallee (Eucalyptus polybractea) is one of many Australian eucalypt species.  It is native to semiarid regions such as along the Darling, and its leaves contain high concentrations of eucalyptus oil which make them useful as a flavouring.

[5] The bunya tree (Araucaria bidwillii), popularly but somewhat inaccurately called bunya pine, is a kind of conifer which in its wild state is restricted to small areas in the Bunya Mountains and a few other parts of Queensland.  It produces erratic but large yields of edible seeds which were much appreciated by Aboriginal peoples; in the years when bunyas produced seeds, large gatherings of people would congregate to feast on the seeds.  Bunya trees can be grown in cultivation over a fairly wide area, although they need a reasonable amount of water.  In allohistorical Australia, bunya trees are also revered as sacred, although they are mostly grown on the eastern seaboard.  In the inland areas, they can only be grown if supported by irrigation.

[6] The Butjupa live in historical northern New South Wales west of the New England tablelands.  The Yalatji live in the historical Darling Downs, among the headwaters of the eponymous river.

[7] Orthodox Plirite priests would be right alongside Machiavelli’s adage of never doing an enemy a small injury, although he would not necessarily have agreed with their idea of fighting wars without taking prisoners.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #18: Of Factions, Farmers and Forests

Look back, if you will, into the past of a history that was not.  You might see a city built on what appears to be a large hill.  Tjibarr, its inhabitants call it, which in their language means “the place of the gathering.”  The heart of the city is built on what seems to be a natural mound raised above the surrounding countryside.

In fact, this mound is not natural.  Tjibarr is an ancient city, the oldest continually inhabited city on the continent, and this mound shows the accumulation of history.  Level after level of the city has been built over the ruined foundations of its predecessors, in a series which stretches back more than four millennia.

The city’s inhabitants are aware of some of that long history.  Their historical memory does not stretch back as far as the city has been inhabited; the most ancient times have been lost in the mists of myth and pre-literacy.  Still, they remember the past, and draw from its lessons to understand their present.

Water surrounds Tjibarr on all sides.  To the north lies the Nyalananga [River Murray], the Water Mother, the greatest river which the people of Tjibarr know.  To the east lies a natural lagoon which has been expanded by human actions, and beyond that the Anerina [River Loddon].  To the west and the south lie more lagoons, these wholly artificial.  The lagoons act as a defence, as a source of food, and for flood control since they can absorb some of the rising waters of the Nyalananga.  Roads lead through the lagoons, yet they can be easily flooded if the need arises.  While some goods do move by road, the bulk of trade moves by boat, so even being fully surrounded by water will merely inconvenience its inhabitants.

Oft times the city has been surrounded by water for months, either when enemy armies threaten, or when the Nyalananga floods.  This matters little to the people of Tjibarr.  What they care about is inside the city itself.  Here is the Thousand-Fold Palace, where it is said that a thousand kings have reigned from within its walls and then been interred in stone within its foundations.  Here is the Plaza of the Four Moons, the grand square which is at the heart of the city, lined with statues of monarchs and other important beings, both historical and spiritual.  The Plaza is an important gathering point when the rulers call the people together, and hosts the main markets of the city, where its inhabitants fondly believe that they can find anything worth buying.

Here is the Hall of Rainbows, an elaborately-constructed building with eight wings around an octagonal centre.  Each of these wings has been carefully measured to be of equal area.  The eight-sided central complex is where the elders of the factions meet to discuss matters of common concern, while above them towers the marble spire which is the tallest point in the city.  Here are the several carefully cultivated fields where the factions play out their rivalry.  On the largest of those sports arenas, the Field of Champions, twenty thousand people can gather to watch their faction’s sporting heroes demonstrate their skills.  Here are a myriad of temples and shrines, offering their own form of testament to the diverse views encapsulated in Tjibarr’s syncretic religious outlook.  It is said that Tjibarr has a shrine on every street corner, and this is not far from the truth.

Here, too, are all of the less prominent but equally essential buildings needed for a thriving city.  Tjibarr throngs with people, both residents and visitors, for it is both an important trade nexus and manufacturer of specialty goods.  The workshops, the schools, the warehouses, the docks, the houses, and other buildings of Tjibarr are less spectacular in their construction, but equally important for the city’s functioning.

--

Tjibarr is not the largest city on the continent, but it is the oldest.  It forms the spiritual heart of the kingdom which bears its name, thanks to its ancient legacy of sacred places and religious traditions.  These days, other cities are nearly as important in terms of economics or population, especially Tapiwal [Robinvale], but Tjibarr remains the official capital and most frequent residence of the royal family.

The inhabitants of Tjibarr and its surroundings call themselves the Gunnagal, a name which future linguists and anthropologists will give to all of the languages and peoples descended from the first yam farmers who lived around Tjibarr.  In 1618, though, the name Gunnagal simply refers to the speakers of a related series of dialects around Tjibarr and its environs.  They are the largest ethnicity within the kingdom’s borders, although far from the only one.  Several other Gunnagalic-speaking peoples are subjects of Tjibarr, and even a few hunter-gatherer peoples along the driest reaches of the Nyalananga are also more or less willing servants of the king.

The heartland of the kingdom of Tjibarr is the middle stretches of the Nyalananga, which it has controlled since time immemorial.  The other borders of the kingdom have expanded and shrunk over the centuries, as rivals have emerged or subject peoples have revolted.

In 1618, Tjibarr shares control of the Five Rivers with two other kingdoms, that of Gutjanal [Albury-Wodonga] on the upper Nyalananga, and that of Yigutji [Wagga Wagga] which controls most of the course of the most fertile tributary river, the Matjidi [Murrumbidgee].  The most powerful rival of all is to the south; the Yadji Empire has long fought with Tjibarr.  Over the last two years, Tjibarr’s armies have been victorious over the Yadji; driving them from the mouth of the Nyalananga, and bringing the rich territories of the Copper Coast [1] under their sway.

Whether this victory will endure is difficult to be sure; even some of the Gunnagal generals are not optimistic.  The Yadji have always been a difficult foe, and the other neighbours of Gutjanal and Yigutji are sometimes foes and sometimes allies, as the tides of war and politics shift.  The last war which Gutjanal and Yigutji fought was against each other, while in the war before that, Gutjanal fought with Tjibarr against an alliance of Yigutji and the Yadji.

Still, of all the threats to the recent conquests, the greatest probably come from within Tjibarr itself.  Tjibarr is nominally a kingdom, but the monarch’s power is far from absolute.  The internal politics of Tjibarr are convoluted, based on a system of semi-hereditary factions whose relations are byzantine in their complexity.  The monarch is personally revered, but to most of the kingdom’s inhabitants, their loyalty to their faction matters much more than their relationship to the monarch.

The ancient institution of the monarchy had long been seen as serving a role of balancing the factions.  With the shifting spiritual tide, some new ideas have penetrated from Plirism, even though the majority of citizens do not follow that religion.  The ruler is seen as the essence of harmony, whose role is to maintain balance within the kingdom.  Often, this means that the ruler does not have to do much, but simply to be there.  This suits the factions, who conduct a lot of government business amongst themselves.  But the ruler is expected to act to preserve the balance, live an orderly life, and deal with outside threats.

--

The Gunnagal who live in the heart of Tjibarr still preserve the names of the kitjigal, the ancient system of social groupings which had evolved in the formative days of their distant ancestors.  However, while the name remains, the kitjigal have evolved into a form which their distant ancestors would barely recognise, if at all.  The ancient kitjigal formed a hereditary system whose leaders filled a combined role of priests, oligarchs, merchant princes, and military commanders.  People were born into a particular kitjigal, could only marry certain other kitjigal, and their children changed kitjigal according to strict patterns.

In 1618, the kitjigal have evolved into a more fluid system of what are called factions.  The factions are social groupings whose activities are intertwined into many aspects of daily life, but which do not have the same hereditary or universal basis as the ancient system.  There is no equivalent of the old pattern of people moving between kitjigal over generations; people often remain as members of the same faction as their parents, but they can and sometimes do change between factions [2].

The factions serve many roles in Gunnagal society, but perhaps their most visible role is as competitors and supporters of sports.  The sports fields of Tjibarr and some other leading cities within the kingdom host regular contests of a kind of football, which evolved out of their old systems of ball games.  Gunnagal football involves a combination of kicking and throwing a ball, with the rules allowing them to hold the ball and pass or kick the ball and move.  Competition between the factions is intensive, leading to a myriad of arguments, rivalries, and sometimes outright rioting based on the results of games.

The rivalry amongst supporters of the factions spills over to most aspects of daily life.  The Gunnagal dress themselves in the colours of their factions, argue endlessly about the results of past games and the skill of individual players, and choose their friends and socialise based largely on faction.  The rivalry links to trade and commercial operations; people buying from a merchant of their own faction can expect a better price, in some cases, or at least better treatment and prompter service.  Broader cooperation between traders, shippers, and other commercial operation is also often conducted amongst people of the same faction, or at least with a friendly faction.

The factions no longer have any formal role in religion, as they had in the ancient system, but they are an integral part of the aristocracy.  Gunnagal aristocrats are expected to be supporters of one faction or another, and this is much closer to being a hereditary system than amongst regular supporters.  For the nobility, the rivalry amongst the factions is much more about trade and land control than it is about sports, although many individual aristocrats are just as avid football supporters as commoners.  Each of the factions also has its own internal politics, with rivalries and personal conflicts being common, especially about which aristocrat keeps control of a given portion of land, or who is allowed to represent the faction when negotiating or arguing with the other factions.

In land control, the faction system has become an integral part of government.  Each faction holds rights to use different areas of land, although they do not own the land in the strict sense of the word.  (In theory, they hold it in trust for the monarch.)  In most cases, the land is worked by tenant farmers who serve one or another of the factions, and who deliver an agreed portion of their harvests in exchange for this right to work the land.  For some specialty crops, the factions do not use tenant farmers, but appoint specialist land managers who can draw on the services of farmers who are effectively hired to work the land for an arranged payment, but who do not directly receive any portion of the harvest.  Arguments over land control, farming, and the like form another major part of the rivalry between the factions; in extreme cases it is possible for a faction to be stripped of the right to work a particular area of land.

The faction system also extends to providing justice.  If there is a crime committed between two people in the same faction, then it should always be resolved by internal methods.  It is considered extremely poor form for outsiders to become involved.  Even in disputes between two factions, it is often preferred for leading members of the two factions to arrange a solution.  The government can become involved in such cases, although sometimes private vendettas are used to resolve even the most serious crimes.

The role of the monarchy in this system is thus often to act as an arbiter, although the government administration does perform some other functions.  Construction and maintenance of waterworks and aquaculture is under government control, for instance, and the government bureaucracy calls on workers based on need, usually during the downtime of the harvests.  The government also maintains something of a standing army, although the factions each have their own armed militia, another reason why sporting arguments often become quite intense.  Having armed members of the factions around is sometimes useful, since they will help to defend a city or region in time of war, but it is also means that unpopular monarchs face armed opposition.  If the factions act together they can depose any ruler.  A skilful monarch usually finds that the best way to survive is to keep a certain tension amongst the factions.

Of course, often monarchs have little difficulty keeping tension amongst the factions, because they argue so much amongst themselves.  The Gunnagal are notoriously argumentative; it is said in the Five Rivers that the hallmark of achievement is getting three Gunnagal to agree about anything.  Visitors usually conclude that their disputativeness stems from two causes; one being their concern over perceived status, and the other over an extreme obsession with precision and details.

Concern over their reputation and rank is certainly a matter of considerable concern to most Gunnagal.  The rivalry between and within the factions contributes to their strong views about perceived status, although there are other factors involved.  For instance, one of the customs inherited from the Imperial days regards the importance of the First Speaker, which was the literal translation of the Emperor’s title.  While this originally mattered for religious purposes, the Gunnagal have come to use speaking first as a measure of primacy at gatherings large and small.  Interrupting each other is a sign of dominance, and so can produce some heated responses when done.

In large formal gatherings, everyone is expected to remain silent until the leading person gets to speak.  They have developed some social rules about how to avoid this, such as for instance not being officially at the gathering until they sit down, and so they can thus speak without offering technical insult to the leading person.  This also means that they have developed a form of sign language which they can use to convey meaning without officially speaking.

The other aspect of the argumentative Gunnagal nature comes from what they think of as a concern for accuracy, although outsiders often take it to be pedantic nitpicking.  In a discussion, they will explore even minor points in great detail.  The Gunnagal often focus on a point to the point of obsession; they will argue a point not only to death, but past its death and keep arguing even after its funeral [3].  This is partly a case of curiosity; the Gunnagal are intensely interested in new ideas and new methods, and partly just a concern with being completely right.

--

The Gunnagal obsession with precision is reflected in many other aspects of their society.  The one which is best known to their neighbours is the intricacy of their metalwork and other forms of manufacturing.  For the Gunnagal are the premier artificers on the continent in their jewellery, their finely-detailed sculptures, and in their metallurgy.  Craft objects of wood, stone or metal made in Tjibarr are widely exported throughout the continent, carried by the inland trade routes or via the Islanders at the mouth of the Nyalananga.  They are also experts at intricate decorations; the interiors of their buildings are often covered with elaborate frescoes and enamelled tiles.

Even much of their bulk metalwork is similarly intricate.  Gunnagal smiths learned the art of working iron from a few Atjuntja who travelled on Nangu trade ships and settled in Jugara [Victor Harbor].  With their intense curiosity and willingness to experiment, it did not take the Gunnagal long to develop new forms of working with iron.  This led them to develop a form of mail [4], which is now the basis of their armour.

Their smiths also know how to work in other metals; silver and gold are common for jewellery and other decorative work.  Jewellers incorporate a variety of other materials into their designs, especially precious stones such as opals, sapphires and carnelian, and even some animal materials such as turtle shells from their artificial wetlands.  They have also become experts in working with brass.  They use brass in a number of medical instruments such as forceps, and also in a wide range of musical instruments.  Gunnagal musicians use a combination of brass horns, gongs, cymbals, and a four-valved instrument which is like a primitive trumpet.

The Gunnagal obsession with detail has also manifested in their mathematics and calendrical system.  Their mathematics uses a base twelve system, because of the way they originally counted.  When counting on their fingers, the Gunnagal do not use both hands, but instead use only a single hand.  They count with their thumb, using it to count the joints on each of their other fingers.  This meant that they counted twelve joints, and this became the foundation of their mathematical system.

The Gunnagal have developed a considerable body of knowledge about mathematics, particularly when applying it to fractions and counting time.  Their calendar is based on a series of twelve-day cycles, which can be roughly translated as their week.  Each of these days has a different name, and the twelve-day cycles are repeated thirty times throughout their year (i.e. 360 days).  They have also developed a month, whose name translates as ‘two times and half a time.’  That is, two twelves and half a twelve (six), which makes for a thirty day month.  They have twelve of these months in a year.  The remaining intercalary days (5 or 6) occur at the end of their year, and they have special names for those days.

The Gunnagal calendar is an ancient system, and has been adopted by many peoples across the eastern half of the continent.  The Gunnagal themselves, though, have been more concerned with precision of measurement.  They are acutely aware of the irregular nature of the year, and add 5 or 6 days as necessary to align the calendar with the sun and stars.  They have also developed more detailed methods for keeping track of time.  Most peoples of the continent rely on sundials, but the Gunnagal have created intricate water clocks with feedback systems and intricate gearing to ensure that time is accurately recorded.

Within each day, the Gunnagal divide time into twelve “hours,” counted from sunrise to sunrise.  These “hours” are divided into twelve units called buyu, which are approximately 10 modern minutes.  The buyu are further subdivided into twelve “minutes,” of approximately 50 modern seconds.  These correspondences are not exact, because the Gunnagal calibrate their clocks each sunrise.  The “minutes” are also more theoretical than real; while well-constructed, Gunnagal water clocks are not precise enough to record time so finely.  This combination of resetting clocks daily and a lack of precise accuracy about their “minute” leads to many arguments, as can be expected from a people who are keen to get in both the first and the last word.

Their close recording of time has led to the development of a currency system.  This started because each of the factions kept their own stores of yams and wattleseeds from the harvests they control.  These stores became a source of wealth which could be traded for other purposes.  To spare themselves the inconvenience of transporting large weights of wattleseeds or yams when trading, they developed a system of carefully marked clay tokens which were used as receipts.  Yams or wattleseeds which were deposited at warehouses were issued these receipts, and the tokens could be traded as a form of currency [5].  Unlike other some other forms of currency, however, the value of a token decreases over time, since stored food diminishes due to consumption, rot and pests.

The receipt and food storage system is divided into two classes of token.  Those representing stored yams are initially worth more, since their flavour is preferred.  However, their value decreases quickly, since like all root crops they are more prone to rot.  Stored wattleseeds are of less initial value, but they decline much more slowly in their worth.

The receipt tokens are used as a currency where they are traded between people to simplify exchanges of goods.  However, they are limited in that they can only be redeemed in the same warehouse where the food was stored, so that they can be checked against the warehouse records to reduce fraud.  They cannot be redeemed in other cities in the kingdom, or even in other warehouses of the same faction in the same city.  The tokens are still sometimes traded at different cities, but the value of these tokens depends on both their age and how far they are from their home city.  Not all the tokens are from the factions; Plirite temples operate a similar system, based on their donations of goods and food provided by the devout.

--

While the Gunnagal will argue about almost anything, there is one group of people they rarely argue with: their doctors.  The best doctors on the continent live in the Five Rivers.  In some respects, their physicians are better than European doctors in the same period.  This is largely because the Gunnagal are the heirs of a wholly different medical tradition, which does not include many of the errors of European medicine at that time.  For instance, the Gunnagal were fortunate not to inherit any belief in the value of bloodletting or of the widespread use of leeches.  While Gunnagal medical tradition has its own mistaken beliefs and ineffective practices, few of those are as likely to harm their patients as bloodletting.

The main Gunnagal medical tradition originated with physicians who lived in the early Imperial period and afterward, when the spread of literacy allowed ideas to be communicated over wide distances.  Several early physicians conducted systematic studies of people with a variety of diseases, injuries, and other conditions.  Physicians emerged as a separate social class during the Imperial period, and have remained so ever since.  They move freely amongst all the Five Rivers kingdoms, maintain contact with their fellow physicians and monitor their treatments.  This is mostly because poor physicians can be ostracised and punished, but it also allows them to share knowledge of new discoveries.

Gunnagal physicians have an established knowledge of pathology.  They have categorised and recognised a variety of diseases, with their usual symptoms and prognosis.  They have a basic knowledge of epidemiology; they understand that epidemics can occur, and recommend quarantine to prevent the spread of disease.  However, their knowledge is far from perfect; they also recommend quarantine for some diseases such as cataracts which are not contagious.

Gunnagal doctors have a reasonable knowledge of anatomy.  Several physicians have performed dissections over the years, and made some accurate deductions about some aspects of human physiology.  Still, they have no concept of using autopsies to identify the cause of death of any particular disease.

When treating illnesses, Gunnagal physicians draw a sharp distinction between two kinds of sickness.  These can be approximately translated as “natural” and “supernatural” illnesses.  They believe that natural illnesses have physical causes and be treated as such, while supernatural illnesses can only be cured by spiritual treatments [6].

Natural illnesses include injuries, rashes, and other diseases with clear external symptoms.  Supernatural illnesses include diseases where the symptoms are either less obvious or completely internal, such as some cancers.  Sometimes, according to Gunnagal physicians, natural and supernatural illnesses coincide, and separate treatments are used for each.  Fever without any other obvious external symptoms is considered to be a supernatural illnesses, although fever associated with a rash, cough, sore throat, or other respiratory infection is considered to be a natural illness.

This means that someone who catches the worst epidemic disease, Marnitja, is considered to have suffered a combination of natural and supernatural illness.  The first stage, pink cough, is considered to be a natural illness, while the later fevered delirium is considered to be a supernatural illness which is beyond the power of any physician to heal.

Supernatural illnesses are treated by a special class of priest-healers, who are distinct from physicians and generally look down on them.  The priest-healers’ remedies do not involve anything as mundane as touching the patients or using much in the way of medicine.  Their methods mostly involve a combination of chanting, invocations, prayer, and spiritual communion with the patient.  These treatments mostly don’t do much harm, but then they don’t do much good either.

In some cases, the priest-healers’ methods have some slight benefits.  By talking with the patients and encouraging them, they sometimes strengthen the patient’s own sense of self-belief, which occasionally encourages healing.  On the other hand, some of their methods include keeping people awake for long periods, since this is thought to allow communion with the person’s spirit.  In fact, depriving patients of sleep can sometimes weaken their immune system instead of allowing them to fight off diseases.

For natural illnesses, Gunnagal physicians have a wider variety of treatments, some of which are actually effective.  They can perform some simple surgery, ranging from minor draining of abscesses up to amputation of limbs.  However, they have only limited methods of stopping blood loss, so many surgeons’ patients do not survive.  Some physicians are experts at dentistry, including the extraction of teeth and their partial or full replacement by gold teeth.  Of course, only the truly wealthy can afford to use gold teeth.

A variety of treatments are based around the application of plant and animal products.  In many cases, these products are in fact useless.  A wide array of ointments, lotions, and other products are applied to irritated skin and eyes, or inhaled as nasal decongestants.  Emu fat is a popular treatment as an ointment, although it does not do any good.  Physicians also recommend a number of plant-based tonics to promote general good health.  Most of these treatments are of limited practical benefit, save as placebos, but they don't do any actual harm, and so their use has persisted.

A few of the plant-based treatments do have some efficacy.  Sweet sarsaparilla is a plant native to the east coast, but the spice trade had long ago brought it to Tjibarr.  This plant has roots and leaves which are turned into a tonic which helps to treat chest infections, inflammations, and which can also prevent scurvy in winter.  It is also used to alleviate the symptoms of some skin diseases, although with less effectiveness, and is sometimes drunk as a cure-all to ensure good health [7].

Corkwoods are a group of small trees which the Gunnagal find invaluable.  One species (Duboisia hopwoodii) is the source of their valued drug kunduri.  However, another species of corkwood (D. myoporoides) contains a number of alkaloids in its leaves which the Gunnagal use to produce some effective medications.  An extract from the plant’s leaves can be used to treat disorders of the digestive system, such as ulcers, inflamed stomach, and colic.  Another extract from the leaves can also be used as a pain treatment, especially during childbirth.  Unfortunately, there are occasional medical lapses with corkwood extract.  Like most early painkillers, physicians found it difficult to get the dosage right, and overuse can sometimes harm or kill mothers [8].

Perhaps the most effective medical treatment available to Gunnagal physicians came from a chance discovery from one of their oldest medical treatments.  Since pre-farming days, steam baths had been used to alleviate illnesses such as headaches or colds.  In the simple form, these consisted of boiling up the leaves of a chosen plant over a fire, while the patient inhaled the steam which this produced.  Usually this was done for individuals, but with growing urban population, some physicians started to use communal steam baths.

Depending on the particular illness, a variety of plants could be used in steam baths, especially gum trees.  Another of the popular plants used for this purpose, the ti tree (Melaleuca linariifolia), originally came from the eastern coast, but was grown further west both for medical and perfume uses.  Ti tree leaves were among the various plant remedies used for skin irritations when applied directly, but they were also used in steam baths.

The use of communal steam baths meant that the oil from ti tree leaves would often condense on the roof as the steam cooled.  Alert Gunnagal physicians noticed that the condensing steam on the roof contained a stronger smell of ti tree than the natural leaves.  In time, this led to the development of distillation techniques to extract ti tree oil from the leaves.  Distillation as a technology has mostly been confined to physicians, although recently it has also been used by perfume makers.

Gunnagal physicians use ti tree oil (and some other leaf oils) to treat wounds, as an antifungal medication, and to alleviate some other skin conditions.  For these purposes, it is usually quite effective.  However, this also leads to some complications.  Excessive use of ti tree oil can cause irritation or inflammation.  Using it around the ears also produces gradual hearing loss, something which Gunnagal physicians have so far not noticed.  Still, for all of its downsides, ti tree oil remains a valuable antiseptic and has reduced death rates due to infected wounds [9].

--

In its agriculture and cuisine, the kingdom of Tjibarr is at the crossroads of the continent.  Many crops have been domesticated here or obtained from other lands.  Even some plants which cannot be grown along the Nyalananga lands are imported from elsewhere for the kingdom’s inhabitants to consume.  For the Gunnagal have the greatest preference for variety and flavouring in their foods of any people on the continent.  The elites, in particular, enjoy having a wide choice of foods, and often encourage some use of irrigation to grow small amounts of crops which would otherwise be unsuitable in the dry lands along the Nyalananga.

For all of their new crops, the single largest source of calories still comes from staple root crops.  The red yam is their most important crop, as it has been for four millennia, and the murnong (yam daisy) is an important secondary crop.  Whether baked, roasted, fried, boiled, steamed, grated, mashed or pounded into a paste-like porridge, the Gunnagal have long made root crops the basis of their cuisine.

Other root crops have spread along the trade routes in recent years, bringing new options for Gunnagal chefs.  Lesser yams have spread from the tropical north.  Contact with the Patjimunra on the east coast brought sweet potatoes, known by their Maori name of kumara, and which ultimately originated in distant South America.  From the western Atjuntja lands came two other root crops, the warran yam and the bush potato, long cultivated in the western lands, then adopted by the Islanders and then spread up the Nyalananga [10].  None of these crops gave yields as large as the red yam, and the sweet potato in particular required more labour since it needed irrigation and was an annual plant, unlike most native perennial crops.  Still, they brought new flavours to the cuisine, and the royal family of Tjibarr have been noted consumers of sweet potato for the last few decades.

The other staple crop is wattles, the wealth-trees, the plants of multitudinous uses.  Eight main species have been domesticated, with the Gunnagal domesticating the first three and in time acquiring most of the others from elsewhere [11].  The nature of Gunnagalic farming means that at least two species are usually cultivated in any given area, so Tjibarr farmers make use of a wide range of wattle crops.  Cultivated wattles and their products have a myriad of uses: timber, dyes, adhesives, soil revitalisers, a source of bark-skin paper, mulch, tannins for leather, scents in perfumes, and many more.

From a culinary perspective, the main use for wattles is the production of wattleseeds, with a secondary production of wattle gum.  The different species of wattleseeds offer some differences in flavouring but are otherwise similar.  Wattleseeds can be eaten whole like a cereal, but they are usually ground into flour.  Wattleseed flour lacks gluten, and so it does not rise when baked.  It is most commonly cooked into a variety of flatbreads.

Noodles are another common culinary practice for wattleseed flour, made by boiling the flour either alone or with duck or emu eggs.  The first visiting Europeans who tasted these products called them black noodles, because of the distinctive dark colour of wattleseed flour.  The Gunnagal also grow a few other crops which produce edible seeds, such as purslane, native flax, or spiny-headed mat-rush.  These seeds are also ground into flour, and used either in combination with wattleseed flour for additional flavouring, or as their own distinctive crops.

Besides staple crops, the Gunnagal grow many other plants as delicacies, nutritional supplements, condiments or for non-food uses.  Fruits and nuts are much favoured, and the Gunnagal have access to a variety of them.  Many of these fruits were domesticated early in the history of Gunnagalic civilization, and are widespread in Tjibarr and elsewhere in the Five Rivers.  The most commonly grown fruits are those which can be grown without irrigation: quandongs, desert limes, and native raspberries.  Some other native fruits require irrigation and are thus either imported or grown as rare delicacies or for the social elite; the most notable of these are muntries, native passionfruit, and apple berry [12].

In recent times, the Gunnagal have domesticated some additional fruits to add to their cuisine.  Australian boxthorn (Lycium australe) is a relative of the wolfberry or goji berry (L. barbarum and L. chinense) which was first domesticated in China.  Australian boxthorn is a small, hardy shrub which produces small orange-red berries, and had long been collected by hunter-gatherer Aboriginal peoples.  The early Gunnagal also collected the wild plants, sometimes for their fruit, but more often for using their leaves or root bark as part of traditional medicines for treating sore eyes, inflammations, and skin diseases.  This process slowly led to the domestication of the plant.

The Gunnagal use cultivated Australian boxthorn for medicinal purpose, but they have discovered a much more pleasing use.  The Gunnagal had long produced ganyu (yam wine) from fermenting yams and flavouring it with the juice of desert limes.  Boxthorn fruit has a nut-like taste which neatly complemented the flavour of ganyu, and so now most of the fruit harvest goes for this purpose.

Another plant which the Gunnagal have recently domesticated is the bush pear (Marsdenia australis), a native vine which is widespread across the interior.  It is most common in the more arid areas, away from the main farming civilizations, and thus was not domesticated early.  It started to be cultivated during the unusual climatic conditions of the ninth and tenth centuries AD, when farming peoples moved into the Red Lands beyond the Anedeli [Darling] and became more familiar with some of the desert plants.  Domesticated bush pears spread out from the Red Lands to the other farming peoples of the Five Rivers, including Tjibarr.

The bush pear is a drought-hardy vine of which almost all parts of the plant are edible.  It produces a pear-shaped fruit with a great many seeds inside; the fruit pulp is sweet, and the edible seeds are reminiscent of peas.  The leaves and stems of the plant are equally edible, and are collected and roasted whenever the vines are pruned.  The flowers can be collected and cooked, with a taste that is reportedly like broccoli.  The vine also produces an edible tuber which the Gunnagal chefs collect and roast along with yams and murnong.  The Gunnagal name for the bush pear translates – for very good reason – as “many vine.”

The settlement of the Red Lands also led to the domestication of the kutjera or desert raisin (Solanum centrale).  A relative of tomatoes and tamarillo, this plant produces a small fruit with a strong, pungent taste.  It is widespread across the arid regions of the continental interior.  In the wild, it fruits prolifically in the year after fires or good rains.  When farmers moved beyond the Anedeli, they discovered that they could mimic these effects by a little judicious irrigation.  This led to the domestication of kutjera.  The strong taste of the fruit means that it is commonly used as a condiment in sauces and dressings, and is only rarely eaten fresh [13].

Besides their new fruit crops, the Gunnagal in Tjibarr and elsewhere in the Five Rivers have also benefitted from the spread of two new nut crops.  Macadamia trees are native to the higher rainfall areas of the eastern seaboard, and produce a nut which for a long time was wild-gathered as a favoured food.

Over time, this led to the domestication of the macadamia amongst the ancestors of the Kiyungu [in coastal south-eastern Queensland].  Cultivation of the macadamia spread along the tin routes until it arrived in Tjibarr.  However, growing of macadamias is on a small scale, since they require substantial irrigation.  Macadamia nuts are only eaten by the social elite, since they control the limited supply [14].

The other nut crop which the Gunnagal sometimes use is unusual in that it has not, strictly speaking, been domesticated.  The bunya tree (Araucaria bidwillii) is a conifer which produces very large cones full of edible nuts, similar to pine nuts, which can be eaten raw or roasted, or ground into flour and cooked into bread.  The bunya is erratic both in its germination and its seed production; cones are not formed every year.  To hunter-gatherer peoples, the intermittent fruiting of the bunya tree (usually every third year) was a sacred occasion.  Disputes were halted by truce and runners carried message sticks from band to band, leading to great gatherings (corroborees) where many peoples came together to feast on the abundant harvest.  The bunya tree itself was regarded as sacred.

The veneration of the bunya tree was one belief which withstood the tide of the Great Migrations.  When Gunnagalic farmers first entered regions where the bunya trees grew, they acquired the same view of the tree as sacred.  Since they were already growing their own food, the fruiting of the bunya no longer brought about the same gathering of people, but it was still regarded as a time where disputes should be put aside.  Sacred bunya trees also spread south along the tin routes, even to the drier regions where they required irrigation to grow.  The trees have not changed in any significant way from their wild ancestors, and are thus not truly domesticated, but they are still cultivated widely.  Amongst the Gunnagal in Tjibarr, the fruiting of the bunya trees is a time of truce amongst the factions, when disputes are set aside and the bunya nuts are handed out freely for all to consume.  The tree itself is also revered; it is considered extremely poor manners to have any arguments or violence while close to a bunya tree.

Gunnagal cuisine also incorporates a range of other plants which have some nutritional or taste benefits.  They have a variety of crops which are grown partly or primarily as leaf vegetables; warrigal greens, purslane, and scrub nettles are among the most common.  Native flax is grown both for its edible seeds and as a source of fibre.  Several thousand years of selective breeding means that some varieties of native flax now have very large seeds.  These are often pressed to extract a form of linseed oil which is used in cooking.  They grow beefsteak fungus and several species of mushrooms, which are carefully cultivated on mulches of wattle timber and leaves enriched with emu manure.

Of all the plant products available to the Gunnagal, though, none are more treasured than those used as drugs or spices.  The most basic spice is a sweetener, wattle gum.  One of the many uses of this gum is to dissolve it in water and use it to sweeten drinks or as part of sauces and dressings on food.  Wattle gum is relatively cheap to obtain.  It is tapped from wattles by cutting notches into the bark once the summer heat has faded, and returning a few weeks later to collect the large lumps of gum which exude from the notches.

The Gunnagal use a variety of herbs and spices as part of their cuisine.  Some are grown locally in dryland agriculture or through irrigation, while others are imported along the trade routes from north, east or south.  Many of the locally-grown spices have been modified by thousands of years of selective breeding into much stronger, more consistent flavours than their wild ancestors.

The most commonly used local spices are river mint, mintbushes, and pepperbushes, which are all easily cultivatable using dryland agriculture or light irrigation [15].  Eucalyptus leaves from several species of local gum trees are also used to flavour food; the most commonly cultivated species are blue-leaved mallee (Eucalyptus polybractea) and peppermint gum (E. dives).  Sea celery, a close relative of common celery, is grown as a herb and condiment.   Lemon-scented grass (Cymbopogon ambiguus) is used as a herb in cooking [like common lemon grass], and is also used to make a lemony tea.

Some spices which were originally native to the eastern coast are now grown in considerable quantities in Gunnagal lands.  Native ginger (Alpinia caerulea) is a shrub whose berries, leaf tips and roots produce subtly different gingery flavours.  Gunnagal chefs choose which sort of ginger to use depending on their preferences, and their general attitude is that no good roast is complete without being flavoured by some form of native ginger.  The roots, shoots and berries of sweet sarsaparilla (Smilax glyciphylla) are also used by Gunnagal chefs to flavour drinks and soups.  As well as being a seasoning, sweet sarsaparilla is an important element of Gunnagal medicine.

The most valuable spices are those which are too difficult to grow in the dry, occasionally frost-prone lands along the Nyalananga.  These spices the Gunnagal need to import from elsewhere, usually from the damper areas in the eastern mountains or even the eastern seaboard.  The overland spice routes are ancient, with some of them having been used for two millennia.  Some of these spices routes have been partly replaced by seaborne trade on Nangu ships, but many of the spices grow best in more northerly regions where the Nangu do not visit.  The two most important areas of spice production are the Daluming kingdom [around Coffs Harbour] and Patjimunra lands [Hunter Valley].

Of the spices imported from the east coast, the greatest quantity and the greatest prices are both commanded by myrtles.  These are several species of trees whose leaves contain distinctive flavours.  On the eastern coast these leaves are normally used fresh, but they are also easily dried and traded overland.  Lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) is the most common, with a sweet blended flavour which the social elites in Tjibarr consider as superior to any lemon-flavoured alternatives [16].  Aniseed myrtle (Syzygium anisatum), cinnamon myrtle (Backhousia myrtifolia) and curry myrtle (B. angustifolia) also have highly-valued flavours, and are traded over the mountains in considerable volume.  Apart from myrtles, the other main spice is the strawberry gum (Eucalyptus olida), whose leaves are dried and used for similar purposes as a sweet spice [17].

Apart from their many spices, the plants most important to the Gunnagal are those which are used to make their main drug, kunduri.  By far the preferred plant for this purpose is corkwood.  For centuries Garrkimang had an effective monopoly on corkwood production, but it has now spread throughout the Five Rivers, including to Tjibarr.  Kunduri is a nicotine-rich drug formed by mixing corkwood (or a substitute) with wood ash from wattle trees, which is then chewed [18].  It acts as a stimulant, creating a sense of wellbeing, and in mild doses it can suppress hunger and thirst.  In particularly strong doses, kunduri can act as a sedative or a hallucinogen.

Those Gunnagal who cannot afford kunduri have to rely on the old standby of alcohol.  The most expensive form is gum cider, which needs to be imported from the Cider Isle [Tasmania].  This is rare and expensive in Tjibarr, and virtually unavailable further upriver.  The best locally-produced form of alcohol is ganyu, a form of yam wine mixed with other fruit flavourings such as desert limes or boxthorn fruit.  For those who cannot afford ganyu, the alternative is a kind of yam beer which has only a weak alcohol concentration.  The Gunnagal do not have access to distilled spirits; knowledge of distillation is still restricted to doctors and perfume-makers.

In terms of meat and animal products in their cuisine, the Gunnagal at Tjibarr and elsewhere in the Five Rivers have not changed much since their early ancestors.  They still maintain artificial wetlands as a source of fish and waterbirds.  Their key domesticated animals for meat are emus and ducks, with dogs an occasional delicacy.  Duck and emu eggs are used in their cuisine almost as much as the meat of those animals.  However, they have not yet obtained the domesticated geese which are used by some peoples on the Cider Isle and other south-eastern regions.

When consuming food, the Gunnagal have a variety of eating utensils.  By far the most common method is a combination of knives and fingers, where they simply cut the food and lift it into their mouths.  They sometimes use a two-pronged analogue to a fork to help them hold meat while they cut it, although this is not commonly used to convey food to the mouth.  Soup and other liquid foods are usually sipped from bowls.  Spoons are known, but are used mostly by the upper classes, where they are used at all.

--

For more than two thousand years, the Gunnagal and their ancestors have used a perennial system of agriculture.  Cyclical experience with droughts and loss of soil fertility taught them the importance of systems which could replenish the land, and which could prepare for downturns.  Sometimes this involved crop rotation or companion planting.  Sometimes it involved developing methods of food storage which would last for a decade or more [19].  Sometimes it meant selection of crop species which could survive the trials of drought, flooding, or bushfires.

All of these practices had one factor in common: they required the Gunnagal to think about the longer term.  These agricultural requirements have contributed to the broader development of a long-term mindset amongst the Gunnagal, both in terms of government planning and individual decision-making.  They are not conservationists in any modern sense of the word; they still see the natural world as something to be exploited.  Still, they think in terms of what an action will mean, not just for today, but for the future.  They also are more alert to gradual shifts in climate, in soil fertility, or other developments.

For instance, in their creation and maintenance of artificial wetlands, and their designation of royal hunting grounds, Gunnagal government and faction planners think in terms of sustainability.  Catches of waterfowl and fish are subject to quotas, and only chosen hunters are allowed to catch kangaroos in designated hunting areas.

When it comes to planting and maintaining forests, the Gunnagal adopt a longer term view.  They can obtain plenty of small-scale timber from their planting of wattles, but their main domesticated wattles do not grow tall enough to supply really large logs.  For this, and for other tree-related products, the Gunnagal have turned to plantation systems, coppicing, and managed woodlands.  They maintain plantations of a number of fast-growing eucalypts such as blue gums, which they cut down every ten or fifteen years, and then leave to regrow.  This gives them a useful source of larger timber for construction, boat-building, and other purposes.

In other woodlands, the Gunnagal also think in terms of managing the environment for more thorough exploitation.  They will selectively burn or uproot weed species in favour of plants which they find more useful.  They sometimes make small clearings to allow favoured understorey plants to appear, particularly those which produce seasonal fruits or other flavoursome products.  These plants are not domesticated as such, but the Gunnagal still rely on gathering their products [20].  Anywhere near where the Gunnagal live, no area is truly a wilderness, even if it only rarely has people in it.

Some of the trees which are planted and managed in this format are not used for timber, but for more valuable products.  The Gunnagal around Tjibarr have developed substantial plantations of black and white cypress pines, two relatively drought-tolerant conifers native to their homeland [21].  The cypress pines are eventually harvested for high-quality timber, but throughout their lives, they are tapped as a source of resin.  The Gunnagal use this resin for many purposes, such as a varnish and adhesive, for soap-making, an ingredient in ink, and as a component of incense.

Their most valuable use of resin, however, comes from the application of another Gunnagal discovery: distillation.  Gunnagal chemists have learned how to distil resin and other plant products to produce essential oils.  The main use of these distilled products comes from the production of perfumes.  While several peoples across the continent manufacture perfumes from crushed herbs and plant products, only the Gunnagal know how to distil resin, flowers, and leaves to obtain more concentrated fragrances.

Gunnagal perfume makers use a variety of blends of distilled resins, flowers (especially wattles), and other aromatic parts of plants to produce a diverse range of perfumes.  These scented products are sometimes used for religious purposes, and are also a significant part of Tjibarr’s exports.  The most expensive of all perfumes are those made using a form of musk.  Gunnagal perfume makers collect this product from the musk duck, a bird which frequents their artificial wetlands.  The rights of harvesting musk ducks are one of the most contentious of economic issues that the factions argue over; musk is the most expensive animal-based product on the continent.  The complex, earthy fragrances of musk-based perfumes are the most highly-favoured scent on the continent [22].

--

In 1618, as the isolation of the island continent comes to an end, all of its inhabitants will face immense challenges.  Contact with the outside world, with its new technologies, faiths, diseases and ideas, will change the fate of the island continent.  Still, of all of the peoples who cultivate yams and wattles, the Gunnagal are perhaps the most fortunate.  With their immense curiosity, ruthless exploitation of any possible advantages, and mindfulness of the longer term, the Gunnagal are the best-placed to exploit the threats and opportunities which they will encounter in the decades ahead...

--

[1] The Copper Coast is the name which the Gunnagal use for the fertile regions in contemporary south-eastern South Australia, stretching from the Murray Mouth to Port Augusta.  In contemporary Australia, this region holds most of South Australia’s population and agriculture.  The Gunnagal call it the Copper Coast for reasons of historical memory; it was the most important ancient source of copper.  While the metal is still mined there, it has become less important since the Gunnagal learned the arts of ironworking; iron is mined in the Copper Coast (some small deposits) and other locations throughout Tjibarr’s territory.

[2] The factions have preserved the old colour names: gray, white, black, gold, blue (i.e. medium and dark blue), azure (light blue), green and red.  Aside from some occasional decorative motifs, they have lost the connection with the ‘totems’ which their ancestors used.

[3] If the Gunnagal were medieval Christians, they would not just argue over how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, but what their names were, what they were wearing, and which direction the pin was pointing.

[4] Or chain mail, as it is sometimes anachronistically called.

[5] A similar system was used in ancient Egypt, although through the temples rather than any equivalent of the factions.

[6] Historical Aboriginal peoples drew a similar distinction between physical and spiritual illnesses.

[7] Sweet sarsaparilla (Smilax glyciphylla) is a close relative of Jamaican sarsaparilla (S. regelii).  The Jamaican plant has been used as a flavouring and medicine in much of the world, and the Australian version has similar properties.  Sweet sarsaparilla is native to the east coast, but it is easily cultivatable over a wide range of habitats.  (In contemporary Australia, it is mostly used as an ornamental plant.)  It was an important component of traditional Aboriginal medicine, and used for medicinal purposes in early colonial days.  It was also one of the first native Australian plants to be exported in quantity; for a time in the nineteenth century, it was exported to China for use in traditional medicine there.  Sources differ as to how much medical benefit sweet sarsaparilla has.  It can definitely prevent scurvy, and it seems to reduce inflammations, but the other uses it was put to may just have been the placebo effect in action.

[8] This species of corkwood (Duboisia myoporoides) is commercially grown today as a source of several alkaloids used to make modern pharmaceutical products.  In addition to the uses listed above, it can also be used to treat motion sickness and in various psychiatric uses, such as a rapid-onset sedative or to alleviate Parkinson’s disease.

[9] Ti trees were an important component of traditional Aboriginal medicine.  Today, the commercial extraction of ti tree oil from plantations has become a significant industry.  While there are some extravagant claims made for the benefits of ti tree oil, its use as an antiseptic and antifungal agent is much more well-documented.  The ti tree oil which the Gunnagal use comes from a species called the narrow-leaved paperbark (Melaleuca linariifolia).  This is a different species to the main source of commercial ti tree oil today (M. alternifolia), but the properties of the oil are more or less identical.

[10] The lesser yam (Dioscorea angustus) is a hybrid of red yams with another native yam species, the long yam (D. transversa).  It needs somewhat higher rainfall and/or irrigation and produces smaller yields than red yams, and is thus a secondary crop.  (It is more important in the north, since unlike red yams, it can grow in the tropics.)  Warran yams (D. hastifolia) are another native yam species which can be grown in areas of moderate rainfall.  “Bush potato” is a name which has been applied to several Australian plants.  The one referred to here is Platysace deflexa, which is unrelated to yams but which has quite a distinctive sweet taste.

[11] The various kinds of domesticated wattles differ in their productivity for seeds, the time of flowering (early or late), how much wattle gum and/or tannins they produce, and their rainfall requirements.  The most important wattle crop throughout most of *Australia is the bramble wattle (Acacia victoriae), although the sallow wattle (A. longifolia) is more intensively grown in the higher-rainfall areas along the eastern seaboard and in Aotearoa.

[12] All of the fruits listed here are plants which have domesticated or otherwise cultivated in contemporary Australia.  In particular, quandong (Santalum acuminatum) is commercially cultivated on an increasing scale.  Australia has several native species of passionfruit; the one described here is Passiflora herbertiana.

[13] Kutjera (Solanum centrale) is one of several native Australian plants which are called bush tomatoes.  It is cultivated in contemporary Australia in a similar manner to that described here.  Small-scale irrigation means that the plant can be induced to produce fruit for up to eight months of the year.  This does not need to be a large volume of water; being a drought-adapted plant, the kutjera in fact does not respond well to excessive watering.

[14] Macadamias are the most widespread domesticated native crop in contemporary Australia.  The modern crop is mostly a hybrid of two macadamia species (Macadamia integrifolia and M. tetraphylla).  The allohistorical crop is derived solely from M. tetraphylla; this was the more widespread plant and was thus domesticated.

[15] River mint (Mentha australis) is a true mint, with a flavour reminiscent of peppermint.  Mintbushes, also called native thyme, are restricted to Australia.  While their flavour is somewhat akin to true mints, they are nevertheless a distinct taste.  The main cultivated mintbush is the roundleaf mintbush (Prostanthera rotundifolia), although several other mintbushes in the Prostanthera genus are also exploited as spices.  Several species of pepperbushes are grown in Gunnagal lands, each with their own distinctive tastes.  Mountain pepper (Tasmannia lanceolata) is the most common, although the higher water demanding Dorigo peppers (T. stipitata) are also popular.  The rarest and most expensive form is purple pepperbush (T. purpurascens), which has the strongest taste.  This was native to a small area in the Patjimunra lands [Hunter Valley], but has been cultivated and spread west along the trade routes.  All of these pepperbushes require some additional water to support them during drought times.  This is commonly collected rainwater or well water used to grow the plants in small gardens, although there is some larger-scale cultivation using irrigation.

[16] Australia has several cultivatable plants which produce lemony flavourings.  As well as lemon myrtle and lemon-scented grass, there are also two species called lemon-scented tea trees (Leptospermum petersonii and L. liversidgei) which can be used to make a lemon-flavoured tea.  All of these are cultivated on the eastern coast, where tea from lemon-scented tea trees has become a cultural icon.  However, to peoples in the Five Rivers, lemon-scented tea has never held much interest, and lemon myrtle is considered superior as a flavouring, so it is the only one traded across the mountains.

[17] All of these plants (except for curry myrtle) are commercially grown as spices in contemporary Australia, although lemon myrtle is by far the most common.

[18] Australia has a surprising variety of plants which have nicotine.  Aside from corkwood, there are also various native tobacco plants in the Nicotiana genus (relatives of domesticated tobacco), and a range of other species which produce nicotine.  Kunduri can be made from any of those plants (and was done so in historical Australia), but corkwood (Duboisia hopwoodii) was the preferred species whenever it was available, since it has the highest nicotine content.

[19] The Gunnagal are fortunate in that their main long-term food storage is of wattleseeds.  These seeds naturally have thick, impervious coats which allow them to survive in soil for a very long time.  In the wild, wattleseeds usually rest in the soil and do not germinate until a fire goes through an area.  This means that wattleseeds need to remain viable for over a decade; in some species, they can remain viable for up to fifty years.  Luckily for the Gunnagal, this means that stored wattleseeds can keep for a very long time if they are simply sealed in an airtight container or room.

[20] This approach is in some ways similar – although more extensive - to what happened in parts of medieval Europe and elsewhere in the world.  In medieval Europe, a lot of fruit-bearing plants such as raspberries and blackberries were not yet domesticated, but woodlands were managed in ways which encouraged their growth, and gathering of wild berries produced considerable harvests.  Likewise, coppicing of trees was a useful source of timber.

[21] The black cypress pine (Callitris endlicheri) and white cypress pine (C. columellaris or C. glaucophylla, depending who you ask) are native Australian conifers which grow reasonably well even in drought-prone areas.  The white cypress pine, in particular, has flourished since European arrival.  The distilled oil from these pines is used today as a basis of perfumes and other products.

[22] Musk was until recently an extremely valuable product harvested from various animals in Eurasia, particularly the musk deer.  (In allohistorical Australia, the musk duck (Biziura lobata) – a bird endemic to wetlands in the south-eastern part of the continent – will be a similarly-prized animal for the fragrance it yields.)  Until the development of synthetic musk, the collection of musk from musk deer produced what was one of the most expensive products in the world; by weight, it was sometimes worth more than twice as much as gold.

--

Lands of Red and Gold #19: The Bones Of The Earth

Step back far enough into the vanished aeons, and you will come to a time when the continent which will someday be called Aururia [Australia] is just one portion of a much larger landmass.  In that time, titanic forces moved beneath the crust of the earth, buckling the surface and pushing up rocks into a range of mountains which at their formation would have towered above the modern Andes.

Yet the forces that buckled the earth and lifted up those mountains have long since ceased.  The epoch of mountain-building in Aururia ended when dinosaurs still walked the land.  Geological forces still worked beneath the surface, but with different effects.  Now, the currents beneath the crust worked to break apart the land, not to push up mountains.

Fragments of the ancient landmass separated one by one.  Africa had started to rift away even while the mountains were still being driven up in what would become eastern Aururia.  South America separated next, in a slow, drawn-out process which would not see it break away completely for tens of millions of years.  Another fragment broke off from eastern Aururia, moving further east and then mostly sinking beneath the waves.  Only a few elevated portions of that fragment would remain above the waves as isolated islands, the largest of which would come to be called Aotearoa and Neufranken.

The fragment that would become Aururia slowly separated from the southern remnant of the old landmass that would come to be called Antarctica.  Aururia gradually drifted north toward the tropics, and most of this new island continent slowly dried out under the searing forces of the desert sun.

During the eons of continental shattering and tectonic movement, the ancient mountains in eastern Aururia were exposed to the forces of weathering.  The slow but inexorable actions of ice, water and wind scoured the mountains, wearing down the once-towering peaks.  Those ancient mountains, those bones of rock which had been driven to the surface, were stripped of their covering.  Mighty rivers flooded east, fed by glaciers and snowmelt, carrying immense burdens of rock and soil out to the sea to be turned into endless deposits of sand.  The flesh of the mountains was stripped away.  All that remained were eroded remnants, weathered and rugged.  All that was left was the bones of the earth.

As Aururia drifted further north, the sea levels rose and fell in concord with the formation of colossal ice sheets on many of the world’s continents.  Most of the island continent was too dry to form such large sheets of ice, although more glaciers formed in the ancient mountains, wearing down the bones even further.  During one of the more recent times of ice, the first humans crossed the narrowed seas and spread across the continent.

When the sea levels rose once more, there was one place where the rising waters lapped directly against the bones of those once-mighty mountains.  One place where the bones of the earth were directly exposed to the sea.  The people who lived in this area called it Yuragir [Coffs Harbour], and they called themselves the Bungudjimay.  They did not know about the aeons which had preceded them, but they were quick to recognise the eroded bones.  In the weathered and contorted shapes of the remaining mountains, they saw their own ancestors, and named the surrounding peaks after celebrated heroes from their own legends.

For millennia, the Bungudjimay were just one group of hunter-gatherers among many.  They hunted, fished and collected the bounty of the earth, just as their neighbours did.  Sometimes they raided and fought with those neighbours, and sometimes they were at peace.  They were fortunate enough to live beside one of the few natural harbours on the eastern coast of Aururia, but otherwise there was nothing to suggest what they would someday become.

Far to the southwest of the Bungudjimay and their lands, other peoples were learning how to control the bounty of the earth.  Those distant peoples slowly bred a range of crops which let them ensure that the earth brought forth produce in its seasons.  In time, those early farmers migrated across much of the continent, in most cases displacing or absorbing the peoples who had lived there before them.

The Bungudjimay were fortunate enough, or astute enough, to be spared displacement by the Gunnagalic farmers expanding across the south-eastern regions of the continent.  They accepted the first band of farmers who carried yams, wattles and flax into their lands, and mingled their blood and their learning.

A new people arose from this union, who preserved the name and the language of the Bungudjimay hunter-gatherers who had dwelt around Yuragir since time immemorial.  They preserved many of their own beliefs, too.  From the Gunnagalic settlers who had merged with them, they learned the arts of farming, and of working with metal.  Their beliefs mingled, too, particularly those among the Bungudjimay who remembered the bones of the earth.

With a much increased population and the encouragement of immigrants who had built in stone, the early Bungudjimay farmers found a new way to honour their ancestors.  With religious dedication, stubborn determination, and many thick flax ropes, they dragged large lumps of basalt into prominent positions in the mountains.  These were well-chosen sites, usually overlooking cliffs or other positions where they were visible over long distances without being directly exposed to rain overhead.

From here, the Bungudjimay carved and worked the basalt into the form of heads which were meant to honour their ancestors.  The basalt heads had distinctively rounded forms; the Bungudjimay masons tried to avoid anything representing a straight line on any of these heads.  Carved basalt heads were created over a period of about five centuries, starting not long after the Bungudjimay took up farming.  Eventually, changing religious views, a lack of nearby suitable sites, and social disruption caused by the first blue-sleep epidemic [around 365 AD] meant the abandonment of the practice.

While the knowledge of head-carving itself faded, the veneration of the early heads continued.  The Bungudjimay flourished as a people, expanding both north and south along the coast.  They were quick to acquire new technology; given their location just east of the first tin mines, they were among the first peoples to work with bronze.  Yet through all of this development, they did not forget the looming round heads which stared down at them whenever they ventured inland into the eroded remnants of the ancient mountains.

The passage of time and the ravages of the elements would damage many of the basalt heads.  Some were weathered so badly that their original carvings were difficult to discern.  Some were washed out of their original positions and shattered or damaged by falls.  Yet some remained nearly intact, and would still be standing in their original positions when the first Europeans visited the region over fifteen centuries after the first heads had been carved.  The Bungudjimay still considered those heads sacred then, although their explanations of their origins had been woven into legend.  The sons and daughters of the Bungudjimay came to view these heads themselves as their ancestors.

The basalt heads of the Bungudjimay would inspire considerable later speculation about possible contact with cultures in other parts of the world, such as the Olmecs or Easter Islanders, even though their styles were wholly distinct.  These speculations were completely unfounded; the basalt heads were an independent invention, and no meaningful contact occurred between Aururian farming peoples and outside peoples until the first Maori visited the east coast in the early fourteenth century.  Despite archaeological evidence which would find that the basalt heads were carved locally and long before Polynesians or other peoples could have visited the region, the speculation would never completely end.

For the Bungudjimay themselves, the basalt heads were simply an unusual part of their heritage.  Their veneration of these supposedly ancestral heads, and the mountains which held them, led them to a new conclusion about the nature of the soul.  The Bungudjimay came to believe that the soul was contained entirely within the head, and that what happened to the body did not matter.  From the stone head their ancestors had sprung, their own heads were what felt and saw, and only the soul contained in the head would endure beyond death.

The alien nature of their religion was only one factor which separated the Bungudjimay from their neighbours.  All of their surrounding peoples spoke Gunnagalic dialects or languages which were similar enough that they could learn each others’ speech without too much effort.  The Bungudjimay language was completely unrelated, as were many of their traditions and outlooks.  The Bungudjimay had no equivalent to the kitjigal social divisions of their Gunnagalic neighbours, and they found that system alien and distasteful.

Of all the factors that separated the Bungudjimay from their neighbours, the most important was their own sense of independence.  By 886, the Watjubaga Empire had gained control of most of south-eastern Aururia, and appeared to be at the height of its power.  Its emperor commanded the conquest of the Bungudjimay lands, but his armies were utterly repulsed.  This victory would become an integral part of Bungudjimay mythology; when they coalesced into a united state, they would date their calendar from the year of that great battle.

Still, while separated by barriers of language, religion and geography, the Bungudjimay were never completely isolated.  Some ideas and technology inevitably penetrated from neighbouring peoples.  Writing spread to them by the early tenth century, although its use would largely be confined to their priestly classes.  They acquired knowledge of better bronze weapons and tactics while fighting the Empire and its successor peoples to their west, and they would put this knowledge to good use in war.

Before the attempted conquest by the Empire, the Bungudjimay were politically organised into clustered groups of city-states and related farming communities established along the coast.  They had fought among themselves as much as their neighbours.  After the defeat of the Empire and the introduction of writing and new military technologies, they gradually consolidated into more unified governments.

By 1020, the Bungudjimay had united into two main states.  The northern state was named Yuragir, after the ancestral harbour site which became the capital. The main rival was the kingdom of Daluming further south.  This kingdom was named after the major river which flowed through its territory; the River Daluming [Macleay River] was surrounded by a region of very fertile soils which allowed it to support a substantial population.

For two centuries, the northern and southern Bungudjimay kingdoms had a complex relationship; sometimes at peace, but often at war.  Their wars were often more intended for tribute, prisoners and sacrifices than for conquest.  During this time of struggle, the northern kingdom of Yuragir became popularly called the Blue Land because it controlled the best harbour.  Daluming became known as the White Land because of the abundant sand deposited by its eponymous river, both at its mouth and along its banks.

The two kingdoms were united in 1245, ostensibly by a dynastic marriage where the king of Daluming married a Yuragir princess and merged the kingdoms.  In practice this was accomplished more by a military coup, with the remaining Yuragir royal family given the opportunity to find out firsthand whether their beliefs about the afterlife were correct.  However, the new monarch moved his capital to Yuragir soon afterward, and while the kingdom kept the name Daluming after the old dynasty, the political and cultural capital became established at Yuragir.  The old divisions were preserved in some names and symbols in the kingdom, such as the king’s staff of office, which was topped with a blue sapphire and white pearl to signify the old Blue and White Lands.

After the unification of the kingdom, the Bungudjimay became raiders and conquerors on a much larger scale.  Their main cities were along the coast, although they had a few inland settlements in key areas.  Their northernmost city of importance was Ngutti [Yamba], although they claimed much further north.  In the south, they had a thriving city established at Tarpai [Port Macquarie], again with lands claimed further south but mostly raided rather than controlled.  In the west, the mountains for long defied any long-term conquest.  However, in 1592 Bungudjimay soldiers conquered the region around Anaiwal [Armidale], which they still held in 1618.

--

In 1618, the Daluming kingdom is the largest kingdom on the eastern seaboard of Aururia.  It claims more land than it controls, but its soldiers raid even further than it claims.  Daluming soldiers raid for tribute, glory, and religious satisfaction; their boldest soldiers have reached as far north as the fringes of Kiyungu territory, and as far south as the frontier with the Patjimunra.

In its geography and fertility of its soil, Daluming is a fortunate kingdom.  The bones of the earth to the west are much eroded, but they still reach high enough to make clouds condense and bring an abundance of rain.  Occasionally there is too much rain; Daluming is just far enough north that it is occasionally flooded by wayward cyclones.

For most of the time, however, the rain is enough to water their crops and allow them to farm the soil much more intensively than their neighbours inland.  They have access to spices and other plants which will not grow inland, such as myrtles and other spices which they export, and fruits such as white aspen, lemon aspen, and riberries which are consumed locally.  Occasional contact with the Maori in the south-east has brought the new crops of kumara [sweet potato] and taro which grow well in their lands.

Politically, Daluming is a nearly homogenous society under a semi-divine king who has absolute control over the life and death of his subjects.  They are nearly all Bungudjimay speakers, apart from a few Gunnagalic subjects in the outlying territories.  The monarch is revered and lives a life of semi-seclusion; common people rarely see him except on great state or religious occasions, and then only from a distance.  The monarchy is nominally elective amongst any member of the royal family, although in practice the priestly hierarchy usually decides the successor.  Once crowned, though, monarchs do their best to impose their will over the priestly classes, with varying degrees of success.

In its technology, Daluming has usually been like most of the peoples on the eastern coast; most of its knowledge has been acquired through technological diffusion rather than local invention.  In one area, however, they have become the premier manufacturers on the continent.  For the Bungudjimay have found a use for the eroded flesh of the earth, which has been scoured from the mountains, carried out to the sea, and then washed up on their shores.  For they take this sand and turn into the jewels of their world; they make glass, an art in which the Bungudjimay outmatch all others on the continent.

Glassmaking developed several centuries ago in what was then the Yuragir kingdom, and the art has improved since the Daluming conquest.  The technology has diffused elsewhere, but the Bungudjimay are the most accomplished artisans.  They use sand, wood ash from wattles, limestone, and a variety of other local materials to make glass of a variety of hues.  In the last two centuries, they have also developed techniques for making colourless glass, although what they make is not completely transparent, and they have not discovered the techniques of glass-blowing.

The Bungudjimay make extensive use of coloured glass beads for jewellery, and this glass has also been exported widely across the continent.  They shape a variety of vessels out of glass, such as beakers and bowls.  They have made a few glass mirrors, although these are rare enough to be available only to the royal family and a few favoured priests.  The Bungudjimay are fortunate that the sand along their coast is naturally replenished, allowing them to continue drawing from it to make ever more frequent use of glass [1].

Of all their uses for glass, though, none will amaze European visitors than the combination of glass and religion.

--

In the Daluming kingdom, the Bungudjimay inhabitants still hold to their old belief that the soul is contained only within the head.  They think that the rest of the body is only used in this world, and that once a person is dead, the rest of the body might as well be abandoned.  As such, they sever heads for separate collection and honour, and do not bother to bury the body with full rites.  Headless bodies are sometimes simply interred somewhere out of the way, and sometimes cremated.  If someone is killed in battle, even an enemy, the Bungudjimay will simply remove the head and let the body rest where it fell.

Their practice of head-collecting is something which their enemies often find disconcerting.  Yet there is no malice involved.  To the Bungudjimay, the collection of heads is an essential component of funeral rites.  They collect the heads of enemies fallen in battle, and treat them with the same respect as they do those of their own kin.  Having severed heads rotting around doorways is not always pleasant to newcomers, but the Bungudjimay do this both for defeated enemies and their own people.

Head-collection was an ancient Bungudjimay practice, but the priesthood of the unified Daluming kingdom built it into a dramatic representation of their religion.  For one of the strangest sights in Aururia can be found in Yuragir.  This is what the Bungudjimay call the Mound of Memory, but which later English explorers will call Glazkul, and it is that name by which it will become known around the world.

On the easternmost point of their mainland [just inside South Coffs Island, now reclaimed to the mainland in modern Coffs Harbour], the Bungudjimay have built a pyramid.  This is a step pyramid about 100 metres high, although the staggered structure means that it contains much less rock than the Great Pyramids or Mesoamerican pyramids.  This pyramid is partly built on a natural rocky outcrop which supplies much of the volume of the pyramid; the other necessary step levels have simply been built around the rock.

As a pyramid, Glazkul offers an imposing sight in itself.  Built to catch the morning sun as it rises over the eastern sea, Glazkul will appear lit up and shining.  The stone pyramid itself was built over a period of nearly sixty years, with rocks being transported from the nearby bones of the earth and shaped into a new pyramid.  Yet that accomplishment was only the beginning of the true completion of Glazkul.

The pyramid is shaped into ten steps, and each of those steps is formed into what is mostly a flat level.  Except that on the outer rim, at the top of each level, niches have been left in the stone.  These niches were left vacant when the pyramid was constructed; they needed to be filled in later.

Each of the niches has been built to hold a skull.  A skull which has been carefully cleaned of all flesh, placed into a setting of bronze, then fitted into the niche.  Each niche has then been sealed with a block of translucent glass.  Here, rocks which once formed part of the bones of the earth have been eroded into sand, then melted into glass and used to seal true bones.

Not all of the niches have been filled; the uppermost levels are still empty.  For the niches can not be filled merely by any available skull.  The pyramid of Glazkul, the Mound of Memory, is central to the priestly rites of the Daluming.  The yearly round of festivals must be observed from its summit; the equinoxes, solstices, and the celebrations each new moon.

For such a sacred site, the skulls which are placed there must be from worthy donors.  There are two sorts of people considered worthy.  Those who are of royal blood are automatically considered worthy, and their heads are added to Glazkul upon their deaths.  The other, more common way of adding a skull to the niche is that it must come from the head of what the Bungudjimay call a meriki, a word which is usually translated as “blooded warrior.”  This refers to anyone who has a military calling and who has killed at least one person in honourable combat – battle or a duel – and who has in turn died in combat.  The heads of blooded warriors who died of old age are not acceptable.

To have one’s skull added to Glazkul is considered a great honour, at least by the Bungudjimay.  Their neighbours may not always agree, but then the Bungudjimay have never really cared what their neighbours think.  Many of their raids are fought with the objective of adding skulls to Glazkul.  Of course, raids which kill meaningless people are of no use.  The only acceptable skulls are those of enemies who have been observed to kill a Bungudjimay in battle first, or those of their own blooded warriors who have fallen in battle.

With no niche open to Bungudjimay warriors who die of old age, few of them opt to let themselves reach such an end.  For those Bungudjimay warriors who reach a veteran age, a custom of duelling has developed.  These duels are sacred events, often held in the shadow of Glazkul.  It is not unknown for both duellists to wound each other so severely that they both die and have their heads added to Glazkul.

With the strict restrictions on which skulls are worthy of admittance, the pyramid of Glazkul has taken a long time to fill.  Yet the priests and warriors of the Bungudjimay have been dedicated in their service.  The first eight levels are completely full, the glass glistening in the morning light or reflected at night by the torches lit on solstices, equinoxes and each new moon.  The ninth level is nearly full, and only the tenth level remains.  Once that is finished, then it will be the time of the Closure, when the legends of the Bungudjimay say that a new world will begin.

--

[1] For the Bungudjimay, sand is effectively a renewable resource.  Sand is continually drifting north along this area of the east coast, being accumulated across beaches and then pushed up the coast by the process of longshore drift.  Modern Coffs Harbour is an artificial harbour built by connecting two offshore islands to the mainland, and this process has interfered with the natural sand drift along the coast.  (The beach to the south of Coffs Harbour now has an ongoing accumulation of sand, which is causing problems with the harbour).

--

And thus ends the Prologue.