Central Australian Food and Clothing Essay -- Culture Australia Essays

Central Australian Food and Clothing Weather and climate are immensely influential forces in every society, and central Australia demonstrates this nicely. Throughout history, the influence of weather has been evident. The aborigines, European settlers and modern Australians all had or have to negotiate the impacts of weather in their daily lives. The respective cultures of the aborigines and the Europeans are products of weather and worked together to create modern society in Australia. The modern culture has been produced by a combination of cultural and climatic forces and has changed over time as the different groups within it influenced each other. The cultural aspects that I will focus on in this paper are food and clothing. Both have been carefully shaped by cultural and climatic aspects over time, and demonstrate how the aborigines and European settlers influenced each other. In Australia the food commonly eaten today is a mixture of indigenous Australian food, food that was brought there by settlers in the 1800s, and food brought over by immigrants from Germany, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Israel, and Southeast Asia (Avameg 2007). Before British colonization, the Aborigines mostly ate meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and roots. Grubs, lizards, snakes and moths were an important part of their diets as well. The name for this category of food that is indigenous to Australia is â€Å"bush tucker† or bush food (Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal 2007). Bush tucker is determined by weather and climate. The climate in a certain area dictates what can grow and live there. The aborigines eat whatever bush food is readily available in the area that they inhabit. An important staple for central Australian aborigines... ...ynergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-3010.1997.tb01069.x>. Lister, P.R., P. Holford, T. Haigh, and D.A. Morrison. 1996. Acacia in Australia: Ethnobotany and potential food crop. p. 228-236. In: J. Janick (ed.), Progress in new crops. ASHS Press, Alexandria, VA. November 25, 2007. . Martinez, Julia. â€Å"When wages were clothes: dressing down Aboriginal workers in the Northern Territory.† University of Wollongong and Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. 2005. November 27, 2007. . â€Å"Modern Australian fashion textiles.†October 12, 2007. Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal. November 25, 2007. .