Songlines and Stone Axes: Transport, trade and travel in Australia.
Hill, Marji
Songlines and Stone Axes: Transport, trade and travel in Australia
John Nicholson 2007
Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 32pp, ISBN 978 117 41175 002 7
Songlines and Stone Axes is the first book of a new series on
Transport, Trade and Travel in Australia published by Allen & Unwin
that is designed for children and teenagers. It is an attractive and
profusely illustrated 32-page book.
John Nicholson is an award-winning author. He worked as an
architect, graphic designer and illustrator before starting his career
as a children's book author and illustrator in 1990.
Nicholson describes the amazing networks of trade and exchange of
Indigenous Australians prior to 1788. His source material is based on
the work of prehistorians and anthropologists. Some of his authoritative
sources include Kim Ackerman, Robert Edwards, JM Flood, Ian Keen, CC
MacKnight, John Mulvaney, WEH Stanner, Donald Thomson, and NB Tindale.
Nicholson describes in considerable detail the traditional trade
routes. He focuses on pearl shell from the Pilbara and Kimberley coasts
and how the pearl shell journeyed to the inland along three major
routes, and how it was exchanged for spears, boomerangs, pituri and
pigment. He shows how pearl shell was part of a complex trading system
in which items of trade could travel hundreds and thousands of
kilometres across the continent. He discusses trade items like
greenstone axe-heads, belts made of human hair, songs and dances, ochre
and pituri.
While running with the theme of trade networks and exchange,
Nicholson manages to give insights in other aspects of traditional
culture and history. Waterways in different parts of Australia carried
different types of watercraft ranging from the dugout canoes of northern
Australia, to dugout canoes with outriggers in northern Queensland, to
the bark canoe of the Murray River, and the bundled reed boat of
Tasmania. He discusses the Torres Strait Islanders and refers to some of
their goods and services. He talks about eel farming in western Victoria
and describes some of the cultural materials. There is an account of the
great moth-gathering activities of southeastern Australia. The arrival
of Macassans in Northern Australia rates a substantial description.
There is even an account of the coming of the Europeans or the
'coming of the shopkeepers' as he calls them and of the way
they introduced diseases into traditional Australia leading to the
massive decline of the Indigenous population in the 1800s. Into a short
educational text Nicholson manages to pack considerable material on many
aspects of Indigenous Australia.
In trying to explain some of the detail of Indigenous Australia,
Nicholson has selected European terminology such as 'precious
cargo', 'buying a boat on credit', 'packaging',
'the great markets', 'the Mount Noorat market',
'overseas trade', 'all cashed up', 'coming of
the shopkeepers' as a means whereby school students can bridge the
cultural gap. One interesting example of this is the reference to
Indigenous men playing a game with a possum-skin ball at Mount Noorat.
He says this was the original Australian Rules football game!
At times Nicholson falls victim to making generalisations and there
are a few inaccuracies. He says Aboriginal art 'showed the layout
of the country' and while this may be true of some desert art it is
not true of the great Wanjina figures of the Kimberley or the totemic
figures on rock surfaces in northern Queensland. In referring to world
exploration he makes reference to the Chinese admiral bypassing
Australia but then neglects to mention the Spanish admiral, Quiros, who,
in 1605, thought that he had found the 'Great South Land',
which he named Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, and which in fact turned
out to be an island of Vanuatu. The name Australia survived. Nor is
there any reference to the coming of the French. Sometimes his spelling
of 'tribal' names are out of date for example, Pitjandjara
instead of Pitjantjatjara.
Despite the limitations the book is suitable for use by students in
upper-primary and lower-secondary schools and contains plenty of
informative and interesting detail. His illustrations complement the
text and are pleasing and competent.
Reviewed by Marji Hill
Australian InFo International, Sydney
<marji.hill@bigpond.com>
