23 First Nation’s Aquaculture – Tae Rak
Patricia Corbett and Nikita Dubberley
Eel farming in Budj Bim at Tae Rak (Lake Cohdah) is an example of one of, if not the first, aquacultural farming practice in the world. Short finned eels were farmed sustainably by Indigenous Australians and the area has been given UNESCO world heritage listing. It is a place of great cultural significance and history.
More than 30,000 years ago a volcano known as Budj Bim (Mount Eccles) produced a lava flow (Tyrendarra lava flow) whose flow to the sea changed the watershed drainage patterns in Western Victoria, Australia. Over centuries the landscape evolved into large, rich wetlands (Builth, 2006). For thousands of years the Gunditjmara people of Southwest Australia lived in this region in well-populated, permanent settlements (Lourandos, 1987).
McNiven (2015) studied the ancient aquaculture system of the Gunditjmara people as it evolved over 800 years. Gunditjmara engineered and managed water systems in the wetlands to channel and capture short finned eels (Anguilla australis) to ensure year round food supplies in an ecosystem over 75 km2 around Lake Condah (Coutts et al., 1978; McNiven and Bell, 2010). Gunditjmara dug ponds and linked the wetlands by channels to direct water and juvenile eels into ponds and weirs in low-lying wetlands. Woven baskets were placed in the weirs to harvest mature eels (McNiven and Bell, 2010). Sophisticated earthworks were engineered to live store seasonal abundances and ensure adequate fish supplies throughout the year.
This text is from “The Anthropology of Aquaculture“ by Barry Antonio Costa-Pierce , which is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except the introductory paragraph, which was written by Trish Corbett.
Watch the video below from Gunditj Mirring, where Tyson Lovett-Murray, Uncle Denis Rose, and Aunty Eileen Alberts discuss the world heritage nomination for the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape.
References
Builth, H. (2006). Gunditjmara environmental management: the development of a fisher-gatherer-hunter society in temperate Australia. Beyond affluent foragers, 4-23.
Coutts, P. J., Frank, R. K., Hughes, P., Victoria Archaeological Survey, & Aboriginal Affairs Victoria. (1978). Aboriginal engineers of the western district, Victoria. Aboriginal Affairs Victoria.
Lourandos, H. (1987). “Swamp managers of southwestern Victoria,” in Australians to 1788, eds D.J. Mulvaney and J.P. White (Fairfax, Syme and Weldon), 292–307.
McNiven, I., & Bell, D. (2010). Fishers and farmers: historicising the Gunditjmara freshwater fishery, western Victoria. The La Trobe Journal, 85(May 2010), 83-105.
McNiven, I., Crouch, J., Richards, T., Sniderman, K., Dolby, N., & Mirring, G. (2015). Phased redevelopment of an ancient Gunditjmara fish trap over the past 800 years: Muldoons Trap Complex, Lake Condah, southwestern Victoria. Australian Archaeology, 81(1), 44-58. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2015.11682064
