Aboriginal people were primarily hunter/gatherers. But does that mean they didn’t engage in some form of agriculture?

Did they have permanent houses? Yes and no.

As professor Sutton said “ Some of the houses were actually kept going from season to season but they weren’t lived in for the whole year round generally, There was some housing in the western district of Victoria and a few other places where people stayed for maybe a year or more, now that’s at the extreme end. The usual pattern is that people set up housing that was as complex only as it needed to be for the season, so in the hot weather you set up shades or sleep under the stars. Where it’s windy, they would make a windbreak, they wouldn’t make a great big house two metres high.”

In regards to agriculture, a study published in the journal Antiquity, has found over 140 quarry sites, where rock was excavated to produce seed grinding stones in Mithaka country in Queensland.

Grinding stones were used to process native grasses and produce a form of bread. Axes scattered across the area also indicate trade with the Kalkadoon people from the Mount Isa quarries in the north.

When Europeans first stumbled across this landscape in the 1870s, they observed "civilized blacks" living in villages and maintaining intensive fishing industries. In 1871, for example, a sub inspector of the Queensland Native Police, James Gilmour, came across a "village" of 103 huts at the southern end of Thunderpurty lagoon while looking for evidence of the missing explorer Ludwig Leichardt.

Did every Aboriginal language group practice agriculture? No they did not. However it is not outside the realm of possibility that an Aboriginal group, who happened to be in the right place, could start to lay down the foundation of a civilisation.

New book tears apart the claims of Dark Emu and proves ABC deserves real scrutiny

Piers Akerman


Bruce Pascoe.



Peter Sutton, the principal author of the latest work to demolish Pascoe’s humbug, Farmers Or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate (Melbourne University Press) is a most respected anthropologist and co-author Keryn Walshe, who wrote the final two of the book’s 13 chapters, is just as acclaimed in her area of field archaeology.



Why it took seven years for credentialled academics to put Pascoe’s fables under the microscope needs further exploration but the manner in which the taxpayer-funded ABC swallowed his nonsense and spent thousands promoting his work and pushing to have falsehoods embedded in the nation’s curricula is even more deserving of scrutiny by both federal education minister Alan Tudge and communications minister Paul Fletcher.

ABC Head of Education, Annabel Astbury, endorsed Pascoe’s nonsense recently saying: “We are so fortunate to have had the opportunity to interview Bruce Pascoe on Country, helping us understand the physical and written evidence of a people who, for thousands of years, had an organised, innovative and considered use of land that supported bountiful cultural economies …This collection is not just a resource for school students, it is a resource for all Australians.”

It’s unclear exactly what is Astbury’s expertise to pronounce on Pascoe’s bald claims and if she asked anyone with any actual knowledge for input.

As Sutton bluntly wrote “Pascoe’s book purports to be factual …

Bruce Chatwin’s acclaimed but inaccurate Songlines and Bill Gammage’s popular but flawed The Biggest Estate, How Aboriginals Made Australia, which Pascoe leant on in his book, are also criticised.



Pascoe’s denigration of the Old People’s way of life as “mere” hunters and gatherers, earns him Sutton’s thinly disguised contempt though the academic does acknowledge that the Dark Emu controversy may at least have triggered a debate.

This is a debate that the politically correct do not wish to have however.

Sutton and Walshe’s publishers, MUP, would not provide me with a review copy of their book and declined to make the authors available for an interview.

This seems a strange way to assist in publicising a book which I firmly believe should be included in every school reading list even as Pascoe’s works are removed or at the very least, marked fiction in capital letters.

As Sutton told me last year, he didn’t want his work to be written about by conservatives because he thought attention from the (handful) of conservatives privileged to put our views before the public might damage his reputation.

So much for wishing to encourage enlightened debate.

Pascoe has received a plethora of awards, including two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (Book of the Year and the Indigenous Writers’ Prize 2016) and was short-listed for two other prizes, the History Book Award in the Queensland Literary Awards (2014) and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing (2014).

  This is not the first time Pascoe’s work has been eviscerated.   

Valkie wrote on Jun 20^th, 2021 at 12:30pm:


He's inflaming culture wars again, Grappler.

Didn't you say you just wanted a nice rest?

Shurely shome mishtake, no?

Karnal wrote on Jun 20^th, 2021 at 2:33pm:


Nah - the persistence of Pascoe's "works" is inflaming culture wars and inciting fools to take up the cudgels for people who would bash them in an instant if they were to "feel" unrespected in any way.

So much foolishness has been implanted in the minds of the foetal alcohol and drug generations that they will never be able to see the reality for the bullshit.

Niqqer - heal thyself!!