The year 5 students have been learning about Aboriginal agriculture, technology and ingenuity.

Students watched an Aboriginal elder tell about these techniques, took notes and wrote a summary.

Indigenous Australians used basalt channels to guide eels to an extraction point. In the extraction point there are lots of hand woven, hollow nets. When the eels swim through they get trapped and at the other end a person is waiting to catch them. Once they have the eels they smoked them in trees and sent them off to different parts of the country that don’t have any eels. They use a knot rope to make the nets and the know is tied in a specific direction – from the mountains to the sea. The eels made an Aboriginal economy.

Will C 5T

Aboriginals used lots of different things that Europeans didn’t. Before Christ these were made! They used the channels from the dry volcanic lava. They used moist bark to make rope nets to get the eels. The Europeans had the same techniques for nets. The Europeans were not open minded an ignored some Aboriginal technologies. The Aboriginal people don’t waste their materials. I hope in the future we don’t waste products.

Isla O 5B

Indigenous Australians use channels from volcano eruptions to harvest eels. The volcano explodes with lava that then becomes cold and turns to hard rock. Channels of water come through pathways of the hard volcanic rock. Eels swim through the channels of water into a basket with a hole in the ends. A person is waiting at the other side to catch them.

Thomas M 5T

The indigenous used clever techniques and technology from natural resources for many reasons. They used dry lava from volcanos to make channels that guided the water and the eels to a point where they could be caught easily. The indigenous knew the eels loved warm, shallow water which helped them to catch the eels. The baskets would be placed in between rocks where the eels would go in one way and be caught at the other end. The eels would then be smoked in the trees and transported to many places. The indigenous also used moist bark for rope by taking the strands of rope and overlapping them. The ropes were used in building construction and fishing nets. The Europeans used the same techniques and were impressed by the indigenous net, but ignored the other unique indigenous tools.

Clare 5B