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 in 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.
Perhaps their most esteemed poetic device is a form of circumlocution known by the local name of ginnek. In these, simple nouns are replaced by circumlocutions. Rather than saying ‘sea’, a scold might say ‘seal-road’ or ‘endless salt.’ A warrior might be called ‘feeder of crows’ or ‘carrier of swords.’ Simple ginneks consist just of those two elements, but scolds are praised for creating more intricate devices, where each of the two elements in the original ginnek is further replaced by circumlocutions.
Often these meanings rely upon allusions to myths or historical figures. For instance, a common ginnek for death is ‘sleep of the sword.’ Sleep is sometimes referred to as ‘Tjimir’s blessing,’ after a mythical figure who cursed his enemies with weariness so that he could sneak past them. Swords are sometimes referred to as ‘blood worms.’ So a scold might say ‘blood worm of Tjimir’s blessing,’ instead of saying death. Understanding a scold’s verses requires both concentration and knowledge of Kurnawal legends and historical events; without that, even a fluent speaker of Kurnawal would be unable to follow a scold’s meaning.
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.
* * *
Thoughts?
