I will be flying into Perth and spending a week in Western Australia. I would like to surf as much as possible and visit many natural sites in the area's National Parks. Is it necessary to rent a 4x4 or will I be OK with a small automobile?
Answer
Are you really serious about surfing? If you are I would definitely recommend getting a 4x4 as a lot of the great surf spots are almost hidden and you have to drive on the sand dunes to get to them. There are some great places accessible by roads but I would say get a 4x4 and have a bit of adventure whilst you are here as well, it will definitely open up a lot of opportunities especially as you can go off roading while you are not surfing and you can camp out and things like that, it will also make the driving more comfortable as you will have more room for your board and luggage.
Are you really serious about surfing? If you are I would definitely recommend getting a 4x4 as a lot of the great surf spots are almost hidden and you have to drive on the sand dunes to get to them. There are some great places accessible by roads but I would say get a 4x4 and have a bit of adventure whilst you are here as well, it will definitely open up a lot of opportunities especially as you can go off roading while you are not surfing and you can camp out and things like that, it will also make the driving more comfortable as you will have more room for your board and luggage.
was Tasmania separated culturally from mainland Australia for thousands of years before European discovery?
Q.
Answer
Archaeological exploration has established the existence of human habitation certainly no less than 20,000 and possibly as early as 30,000 years ago, when Tasmania was physically part of greater Australia. As to who these early settlers were, some stone implements that have been found correlate with Pleistocene examples found on the Australian continent, suggesting a continuity with populations there up to that time. How those people relate to later continental Aboriginal people remains a matter of debate, though at the time of Western contact, the Aborigines of Tasmania were apparently physically, linguistically and culturally distinct from their nearest "mainland" neighbours.
It may be presumed that most Tasmanian settlement sites from that period of glaciation and low sea levels (c.18,000 BP), being coastal, were progressively flooded as sea-levels rose, isolating Tasmania c.12,000 BP and reaching present levels c.6,000 BP. From that time until European invasion of the island, though like other indigenous Australians the people had a nomadic life pattern, settlement sites remained well-defined and continuously re-visited, and socially connected groups (often inexactly called "tribes") clearly identified territories to which they had exclusive access. There were some ten mutually-incomprehensible languages among the 4-6,000 people living in Tasmania at the beginning of the 19th Century, and there was reportedly also considerable physical diversity between groups.
http://www.justpacific.com/tasmania/first.html
After the sea rose to create Bass Strait, the Australian mainland and Tasmania became separate land masses, and the Aborigines who had migrated from mainland Australia became cut off from their cousins on the mainland. Because neither side had ocean sailing technology, the two groups were unable to maintain contact. It has been a long held view that because of the ocean divide, and unlike other populations around the world, the small population of Tasmania was not able to share any of the new technological advances being made by mainland groups such as barbed spears, bone tools of any kind, boomerangs, hooks, sewing, and the ability to start a fire thus making Tasmanian Aborigines the simplest people on Earth. However, they did possess fire with the men entrusted in carrying embers from camp to camp for cooking and which could also be used to clear land and herd animals to aid in hunting practices. Another school of thought holds that because food was so abundant compared to mainland Australia the Aborigines had no need for a better technology, pointing out that they did in fact originally possess bone tools which dropped out of use as the effort to make them began to exceed the benefit they provided.
It has been suggested that approximately 4,000 years ago, the Tasmanian Aborigines largely dropped scaled fish from their diet, and began eating more land mammals such as possums, kangaroos, and wallabies. They also switched from worked bone tools to sharpened stone tools. The significance of the disappearance of bone tools (believed to have been primarily used for fishing related activities) and fish in the diet is heavily debated. Some argue that it is evidence of a maladaptive society while others argue that the change was economic as large areas of scrub at that time were changing to grassland providing substantially increased food resources. Fish were never a large part of the diet, ranking behind shellfish and seals, and with more resources available the cost/benefit ratio of fishing may have become too high. Archaeological evidence indicates that around the time these changes took place the Tasmanian tribes began expanding their territories, a process that was still continuing when Europeans arrived. It is now believed that they also constructed basic wooden shelters and small domed 'huts' to protect themselves during chilly winter months, although it seems they preferred to live in cave dwellings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Aborigines
Changes in the social, cultural and territorial structures of the Tasmanian people over time are largely unknown. However, there is evidence that around 3500 years ago scale fish were dropped from from the people's diet and they increased their consumption of land animals such as kangaroos and wallabies. The women collected abalones, oysters, mussels and other shellfish and the remains of these form enormous middens around Tasmania's coastline. At about this time they also stopped using bone tools, and refined their making of stone tool implements. Canoes were used during the last 2000 years to travel to islands to harvest mutton birds and seals during summer and autumn. As a mainly nomadic people, Tasmanian people followed the seasonal changes in food supply, such as shellfish, seabirds, wallaby and a variety of vegetable foods.
Archaeological exploration has established the existence of human habitation certainly no less than 20,000 and possibly as early as 30,000 years ago, when Tasmania was physically part of greater Australia. As to who these early settlers were, some stone implements that have been found correlate with Pleistocene examples found on the Australian continent, suggesting a continuity with populations there up to that time. How those people relate to later continental Aboriginal people remains a matter of debate, though at the time of Western contact, the Aborigines of Tasmania were apparently physically, linguistically and culturally distinct from their nearest "mainland" neighbours.
It may be presumed that most Tasmanian settlement sites from that period of glaciation and low sea levels (c.18,000 BP), being coastal, were progressively flooded as sea-levels rose, isolating Tasmania c.12,000 BP and reaching present levels c.6,000 BP. From that time until European invasion of the island, though like other indigenous Australians the people had a nomadic life pattern, settlement sites remained well-defined and continuously re-visited, and socially connected groups (often inexactly called "tribes") clearly identified territories to which they had exclusive access. There were some ten mutually-incomprehensible languages among the 4-6,000 people living in Tasmania at the beginning of the 19th Century, and there was reportedly also considerable physical diversity between groups.
http://www.justpacific.com/tasmania/first.html
After the sea rose to create Bass Strait, the Australian mainland and Tasmania became separate land masses, and the Aborigines who had migrated from mainland Australia became cut off from their cousins on the mainland. Because neither side had ocean sailing technology, the two groups were unable to maintain contact. It has been a long held view that because of the ocean divide, and unlike other populations around the world, the small population of Tasmania was not able to share any of the new technological advances being made by mainland groups such as barbed spears, bone tools of any kind, boomerangs, hooks, sewing, and the ability to start a fire thus making Tasmanian Aborigines the simplest people on Earth. However, they did possess fire with the men entrusted in carrying embers from camp to camp for cooking and which could also be used to clear land and herd animals to aid in hunting practices. Another school of thought holds that because food was so abundant compared to mainland Australia the Aborigines had no need for a better technology, pointing out that they did in fact originally possess bone tools which dropped out of use as the effort to make them began to exceed the benefit they provided.
It has been suggested that approximately 4,000 years ago, the Tasmanian Aborigines largely dropped scaled fish from their diet, and began eating more land mammals such as possums, kangaroos, and wallabies. They also switched from worked bone tools to sharpened stone tools. The significance of the disappearance of bone tools (believed to have been primarily used for fishing related activities) and fish in the diet is heavily debated. Some argue that it is evidence of a maladaptive society while others argue that the change was economic as large areas of scrub at that time were changing to grassland providing substantially increased food resources. Fish were never a large part of the diet, ranking behind shellfish and seals, and with more resources available the cost/benefit ratio of fishing may have become too high. Archaeological evidence indicates that around the time these changes took place the Tasmanian tribes began expanding their territories, a process that was still continuing when Europeans arrived. It is now believed that they also constructed basic wooden shelters and small domed 'huts' to protect themselves during chilly winter months, although it seems they preferred to live in cave dwellings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Aborigines
Changes in the social, cultural and territorial structures of the Tasmanian people over time are largely unknown. However, there is evidence that around 3500 years ago scale fish were dropped from from the people's diet and they increased their consumption of land animals such as kangaroos and wallabies. The women collected abalones, oysters, mussels and other shellfish and the remains of these form enormous middens around Tasmania's coastline. At about this time they also stopped using bone tools, and refined their making of stone tool implements. Canoes were used during the last 2000 years to travel to islands to harvest mutton birds and seals during summer and autumn. As a mainly nomadic people, Tasmanian people followed the seasonal changes in food supply, such as shellfish, seabirds, wallaby and a variety of vegetable foods.
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