| The land lay poised between fecundity and sterility. The storehouse
of its seedbed was delicate topsoil to which the life giving rain came
fitfully. Only a protective cover of surviving vegetation could save
it from the kleptomaniac winds of summer. Inexorable laws of conservation
guarded the life lying dormant in the loamy soil and of these the Barkindji
people had a profound understanding. They were not mere sojourners in
the land; they were initiated into its mysteries, and were themselves
part of the overall harmony within which they were nurtured.
(Lament for the Barkindji, Bobbie Hardy. Rigby Press, 1976,
p. 1)
The Barkindji peoples included a number of tribes which lived along
the Murray near the junction with the Darling River, north along the
Darling and West towards the South Australian border. The fullest account
of the use of the land before European settlement can be found in
the
detailed history Lament of the Barkindji by Bobbie Hardy, which
Rigby Press published in 1976.
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