EXCAVATED KOALA BONES
Val Attenbrow
I’m looking for references for excavated koala bones.
There are very few koala bones in sites excavated in the Sydney region and I’m wondering if this is the case elsewhere.
I’ve checked many of the early reports of excavations but thought there may be some recent ones [or even older ones] that I have not found.
Any help will be much appreciated
Best wishes
Val
Dr Val Attenbrow FAHA
Geoscience and Archaeology
Australian Museum 1 William Street Sydney NSW 2010 Australia
T 61 2 9320 6196 | E val.at...@austmus.gov.au
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Eleanor Crosby
Interesting question. Because there was most likely heavy predation on koalas, even if only for their fur coats. You might try to get hold of Liechardt's
journals of the Essington expedition in the 1840s (available I'm told from the Qld Museum in .pdf format). At the launch of the translated version Professor Rix mentioned
that Leichardt did not mention seeing koalas north of Jimbour, where he started from. Yet millions of koala skins were taken from that general area less than a century later.
It seems that the cessation of predation is nearly always marked by a huge spring-back of the prey species - for example the duck hunts at Burleigh on the Gold Coast in the late C19.
A similar effect has also been noted at the La Brea Tar Pits near Los Angeles.
Eleanor
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Val Attenbrow
Thanks for your response Eleanor – by ‘heavy predation on koalas’ does this refer to Aboriginal people or non-Aboriginal? If former, it is interesting that Aboriginal cloaks or rugs are usually referred to as kangaroo or possum skin cloaks.
Val
Dr Val Attenbrow FAHA
Geoscience and Archaeology
Australian Museum 1 William Street Sydney NSW 2010 Australia
T 61 2 9320 6196 | E val.at...@austmus.gov.au
Eleanor Crosby
Perhaps surviving 'cloaks' come in general from south of Queensland?
Anyway, isn't koala supposed to taste rather powerfully eucalyptusy (to coin a word)
Eleanor
Denis Gojak
----- Original Message -----From:oza...@googlegroups.comTo:"oza...@googlegroups.com" <oza...@googlegroups.com>Cc:Sent:Wed, 23 Nov 2016 22:37:00 +0000Subject:{OzArch} EXCAVATED KOALA BONES
I’m looking for references for excavated koala bones.
There are very few koala bones in sites excavated in the Sydney region and I’m wondering if this is the case elsewhere.
I’ve checked many of the early reports of excavations but thought there may be some recent ones [or even older ones] that I have not found.
Any help will be much appreciated
Best wishes
Val
Dr Val Attenbrow FAHA
Geoscience and Archaeology
Australian Museum 1 William Street Sydney NSW 2010 Australia
T 61 2 9320 6196 | E val.at...@austmus.gov.au
Jeannette Hope
Hi All
I can’t help with koalas in sites – I’ve never found any, but that may be because I’ve never analysed bones from a site in koala country. A couple of other comments though.
1. Take all figures for koalas populations in the historic past with a very large grain of salt. There’s a lot of myth and misinformation around. For example, the Australian Koala Foundation website has the following statement: “more than 400,000 pelts were shipped in 1901 alone from Adelaide to the USA”. When Europeans arrived there were no koalas in SA (since the Pleistocene), except in the far SE near the Vic border. Eighteen were introduced to Kangaroo Island in the 1920s, where they did well: in the 1960s some of those were moved to the Mt Lofty Ranges. So if there were indeed 400,000 pelts shipped from Adelaide in 1901, they definitely weren’t koalas. One possibility is water rats, which were trapped up the Murray beyond SA from riverboats. One source I have says that this started because a family had connections with the Canadian fur trade. The smaller size of the water rats would make a figure of 400,000 more credible (but still rather large), as is Adelaide as an export port for trappers working the Murray. The trade didn’t last long because the water rats were cleared out pretty fast. There are a few still around, I’ve seen 2 in 20 years (!). So were millions of koalas taken from Qld? I’m not familiar with historic records there, except along the NSW border, but certainly the koala habitat was much more extensive.
2. Re Leichhardt’s absence of observations. In the 1960s a kangaroo ecologist (possibly Tim Ealey or Martin Denny) looked at explorers’ and travellers’ accounts for western NSW/Victoria to get an estimate of kangaroo numbers at contact. The purpose was to get base-line data to evaluate whether the establishment of tanks on stations had led to a population increase. It turned out that some people didn’t mention kangaroos very often, but the ecologist cautioned against the obvious explanation – the numbers were low, possibly due to Aboriginal predation. Counter-intuitively, they suggested that when kangaroos were commonplace, they were less likely to be mentioned. I remember one quote (but not the source) which went something like: ‘Today we came to a river, and were able to have a good feed of ducks, which was a wonderful change from the boring kangaroo meat which has been our staple for the last 6 weeks’. Except, that there was no mention of kangaroos in the journal for that six weeks. (I think I have this paper in a box somewhere, will try to locate it). I’ve been aware of this tendency in my own work. In 1995 the caliche virus escaped and really knocked the rabbit population. A years or so later, in WNSW, I caught myself writing in my field notes ‘saw a rabbit today’. I realised that I was doing the same thing as above: never mentioning rabbits when they were everywhere, part of the background, but after the numbers dropped, it was quite unusual to see one, so the rare observation was noteworthy.
3. Springback after cessation of predation. That doesn’t work for kangaroos in sheep pastoral country. Aboriginal predation may have declined, but it was replaced by heavy – heavier? - European predation, not so much to eat kangaroos, but because they were a competitor for sheep. There is some good data for 19C NSW pastoral stations on numbers of kangaroos, wild dogs and rabbits killed on an annual basis in archival Lands records: Eric Rolls used these in his book ‘They all ran wild’. As noted in 2) the construction of wells, bores, ground tanks and dams across the landscape really advantaged kangaroos. This of course doesn’t account for koalas, but I’d come back to the question, are the huge numbers said to be killed for the fur trade real?
Cheers
Jeannette
From: oza...@googlegroups.com [mailto:oza...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Eleanor Crosby
Sent: Thursday, 24 November 2016 1:05 PM
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Subject: Re: {OzArch} EXCAVATED KOALA BONES
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Val Attenbrow
Jeanette
Many thanks for your detailed comments – very much appreciated. Will certainly bear them in mind when reading the historical accounts.
Best wishes
Val
Dr Val Attenbrow FAHA
Geoscience and Archaeology
Australian Museum 1 William Street Sydney NSW 2010 Australia
T 61 2 9320 6196 | E val.at...@austmus.gov.au
phil...@gmail.com
John Pickard
On Thursday, November 24, 2016 at 9:37:08 AM UTC+11, Val Attenbrow wrote:
I’m looking for references for excavated koala bones.
There are very few koala bones in sites excavated in the Sydney region and I’m wondering if this is the case elsewhere.
I’ve checked many of the early reports of excavations but thought there may be some recent ones [or even older ones] that I have not found.
Any help will be much appreciated
Best wishes
Val
Dr Val Attenbrow FAHA
Geoscience and Archaeology
Australian Museum 1 William Street Sydney NSW 2010 Australia
T 61 2 9320 6196 | E val.at...@austmus.gov.au
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