AHC: Make Australia technologically advance by 1500

If agriculture is invented in Australia about as early as other centres (say, 8000 BCE), there's no need for colonisation. Any plausible rate of population growth is going to see every last part of the farmable areas of the continent filled up to carrying capacity, long before any plausible colonisers [1] appear.

To put a few very generous numbers on it, assume that the carrying capacity of Australia, with the new crops, is 100 million. That's probably much higher than is realistic, but it's a good round ballpark. Let's also assume that the population growth of these early agriculturalists is a very low 0.1% per year. That's probably also a very generous under-estimate, but it will do. For further fun, suppose that there's also only 1000 of these agriculturalists. That's also far below any reasonable population figure for hunter-gatherer Australia, but assume that the remaining peoples refuse to take up agriculture, and there's no significant interbreeding.

Have a guess in what year Australia will reach its carrying capacity?

Answer: 6842 BCE.

Population growth is a wonderful thing. :D

[1] Excepting New Guinean colonisers, perhaps.
Fully agree, though I didn't know the exact numbers :D, so thanks.

New Guinea was very early in its agricultural development (as you probably already knew), so it could be that a good jumpstart from Kuk Swamp is all you would need for the Queensland Tropical Rainforests, and maybe even the rest of the northern third of the continent, like the Top End and the Kimberly Regions: Much as with maize in the OTL Eastern Agricultural Complex, New Guinean crops such as taro, yams, bananas, and (complete!) protein-rich winged beans could eventually complement indigenous crops such as wattles, boabs (native baobabs), pencil yams, some native species she-oak (used in New Guinea as a nitrogen-fixing crop), along with native and New Guinean livestock such as native fish (like eel-tailed catfish, jade perch, yabbies, redclaws, prawns, flood plain mussels, Murray cod and barramundi) sugarbag bees for pollenation and sugarbag, goanna, dogs as well as pigs from New Guinea. Eventually, other crops could come in through Indonesia and the Polynesians.
 
There are species of native Australian rice that grow across the north of the continet. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/10/15/3038568.htm

Eels were cultivated in western Victoria at Lake Coodah with amassive interconnecting pond system and settlements. http://splash.abc.net.au/media/-/m/29898/indigenous-eel-farming

So if northern riceplants had spread that far or its seeds had be brought south we would grain that could be stored, a plentiful protein source and people working together in a large organised way.
I didn't know about native Australian rice - native African rice (which is to this day a major crop in lare parts of West Africa, as, though less productive in tonnes/hectare, it is nonetheless much hardier than Eurasian rice), but I have never heard of native Australian rice. And thanks for bringing up the Lake Condah Gunditjmara, BTW :) !
 
I agree that a local discovery of agriculture could be the best way to make Australia technologically advanced. For better results you would need that package to spread (or start) in the tropical north (more difficult than the wet southeast, but possible) and have a maritime culture that can trade with Indonesia/southeast Asia. This will allow the Aboriginal civilizations to learn from and adapt Asian technology.

In addition, if you're interested in doing an anti-colonial timeline, this will allow Eurasian diseases to spread early to Australia and become endemic. Future colonists therefore won't have as much of a disease advantage when they attempt to attack Australia.
 
You need to first Aboriginal settlers to avoid slash and burn land management, and to domesticate the herbivorous megafauna, instead of predating them for meat. Also, Australia was not without native crop packages entirely, just without those early accidents that initiated the idea of domestication, which let to the cultivating of decent yielding plants. If those early hunter gathers can catch on to domesticating the giant marsupials, eventually the domestication and improvement of plants would come along. The real issue is those marsupials, in that their breeding is expensive due to gestation periods and the time it takes to reach maturity. Those expenses in the domestication of animals are likely the only reason Australia didn't develop agriculture, which has always been a bizarre anomaly to me, given how ridiculously good the farm land is on the Murray-Darling.
 
I agree that a local discovery of agriculture could be the best way to make Australia technologically advanced. For better results you would need that package to spread (or start) in the tropical north (more difficult than the wet southeast, but possible) and have a maritime culture that can trade with Indonesia/southeast Asia. This will allow the Aboriginal civilizations to learn from and adapt Asian technology.

In addition, if you're interested in doing an anti-colonial timeline, this will allow Eurasian diseases to spread early to Australia and become endemic. Future colonists therefore won't have as much of a disease advantage when they attempt to attack Australia.
I'd dispute that a Eurasian crop package is necessary for Australia, though a New Guinean one probably is to some extent. For this reason, I'd say the tropical north is a better place to start than the south, because of New Guinea's tropical climate.
 
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