DOCSLIB.ORG

Guan Di and Tin Mountain: Chinese Temples in Northeast Tasmania

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Guan Di and Tin Mountain: Chinese Temples in Northeast Tasmania The Newsletter | No.71 | Summer 2015 56 | The Portrait Guan Di and Tin Mountain: Chinese temples in Northeast Tasmania The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) in Launceston, Tasmania, houses a surprising collection. In a specially built room in the Art Gallery building is a Temple containing items from six Chinese temples from Tasmania’s northeast region. Jon Addison Guan Di Temple – ongoing exhibition mining. The Chinese population gradually reduced as this Above left: population gradually declined and many smaller towns were Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery type of mining was displaced by larger-scale industrial A fi gure from one of abandoned, the temples closed and key items from each Launceston, Tasmania operations; in addition, in 1887 the government introduced two sets of Chinese were brought together, eventually ending up in Weldborough. http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/ immigration restrictions. By 1921, 234 Chinese people Opera fi gurines in the When the Weldborough temple closed in 1934, the custodian remained in Tasmania. Most had left mining to run small temple collection. transferred custody to the Queen Victoria Museum and Photo: John Leeming DURING THE 19TH CENTURY, increasing unrest within China businesses such as market gardens, laundries or general Art Gallery, as a working temple for the Launceston Chinese with the destabilisation of the Qing led to waves of overseas stores. Descendants of these pioneers can still be found community. Above right: The migration, with the American and Australian Gold Rushes pro- in Tasmania and other States. front and main altars The temple collection is a fascinating snapshot into the 1 viding a great impetus. Chinese people were rare in Tasmania On arrival Chinese groups would set up portable shrines. of the temple, with importance of religion as a social glue for the Chinese of Tin until the Australian Gold Rush started to attract Chinese miners These would serve as centres for religious observance, but the large main shrine. Mountain. Despite the buildings being simple weatherboard to the goldfi elds on the mainland. This led to a small number once made more permanent, would become the base for Photo: John Leeming constructions, their contents refl ect considerable expenditures. of Chinese miners arriving in Tasmania in the 1860s to search community activities and administration. Europeans called The inscriptions on many of the items in this temple tell us for gold. However, it was tin rather than gold that eventually these temples ‘Joss Houses’. There were six known temples Below: Chinese that they were donated by individuals, surname lodges, lodges led to a genuine infl ux of miners, both European and in Tasmania’s northeast; they were at Weldborough, Garibaldi, and Europeans of the Hong Men ( ) or district associations. Chinese Chinese. America had its ‘Gold Mountain’, mainland Australia Branxholm, Moorina, Gladstone, and Lefroy. All were in on ‘Tin Pot Row’, on the Tasmanian tin fi elds would use membership of groups Garibaldi, Tasmania, its ‘New Gold Mountain’, and similarly, Tasmania became tin-mining areas, although Lefroy began as a gold-mining such as ‘surname lodges’ for support in hard conditions, 1914. Garibaldi was popular for its ‘Tin Mountain’. By 1891 the Chinese population settlement. The temples were small wooden buildings, and to provide some measure of social cohesion and sense one of the major in Tasmania – mostly young men – was almost 1000, which whose humble external appearances belied the wealth Chinese mining of belonging in a strange and diffi cult new place. Some were although appearing small by modern standards, represented accumulated within. towns, and had its part of brotherhoods or secret societies such as the Hong a signifi cant proportion of the entire population of Tasmania’s All known Tasmanian temples were built during the own temple. Photo: Men, which began in the mid-1600s in China as a revolution- North East, as this region was diffi cult country with limited road 1880s, and all were dedicated to Guan Di. Guan Di worship QVMAG Collection ary group. In Southeast Asia, they developed into the ‘Triad’ and track access, and was extremely sparsely populated. appears to have been almost universal amongst Australian QVM:1983:P:1619 criminal organisation. In Australia Hong Men became more In Tasmania, unusually, the Chinese were largely accepted overseas Chinese. The majority of immigrants were poor, of a benevolent association, eventually forming Chinese by Europeans. The levels of antagonism experienced by Chinese illiterate manual labourers, and Guan Di worship was extremely Masonic lodges. miners on the Australian mainland were far less in evidence popular in southern China amongst labourers. Guan Di as a The items in the current temple collection mostly date in Tasmania, although there was some confl ict. Some leaders, deity also off ered a number of other advantages to immigrant from the 1880s. Items were given to these temples by those such as Maa Mon Chinn ( Ma Zhen) of Weldborough Chinese. As well as being a highly regarded ‘Emperor’ fi gure who had ‘received benefi ts and favour’ from the gods, and and Chin Kaw ( Chen Gao) of Launceston, became within the Taoist/Buddhist pantheon, with the ability to wished to reciprocate through the bestowing of high-value highly respected members of the community. For the most cast out demons, Guan Di has the key attribute of fostering material. Items range from carved and painted plaques to part this lack of antipathy in Tasmania was less a sign of toler- brotherhood. This had great appeal in communities separated incense pots and candles, textile banners, large decorative ance and more likely a refl ection of the fact that the tin fi elds from their homes by both distance and cultural practices. fl oats of golden palaces, small shrines and ceremonial weapons. of the North East were extremely marginal mining areas, and The ‘Joss House’, or Guan Di Temple ( Guan The collection also includes two signifi cant sets of Chinese many of the claims worked by the Chinese were not considered Di Miao) at QVMAG holds the contents of a number of temples opera fi gurines, which probably relate to the visit of a Chinese a good economic proposition by European prospectors. It was from north-eastern Tasmanian mining towns. As the Chinese Opera company to the north of Tasmania in 1891. Some items the Chinese system of community organisation and support also show evidence of local manufacture, such as a gong that enabled them to make profi ts from these claims, where frame made from a bicycle rim, and a western rocking horse European miners working entirely independently would have used to represent Guan Di’s mount, Red Hare. found this diffi cult. QVMAG’s temple collection is a rare survivor of a Virtually all of the miners who came to Tasmania were fascinating period in Tasmania’s history, and an insight into recruited from Guangdong Province ( ) in south- Chinese religious practices in Australia in the 1880s. eastern China. They travelled on a ‘credit-ticket’ system run by a Chinese creditor who already lived in Australia. Their similarity Jon Addison, History curator at the Queen Victoria Museum of geographical origin gave them a greater sense of group and Art Gallery ([email protected]). identity, and meant that communication in one’s local dialect was still possible. The few women who migrated came as References wives of the more infl uential and educated community leaders. 1 Nine Chinese carpenters were brought to the colony as skilled The lack of Chinese women in the community led to many labourers in 1830. They were probably the fi rst Chinese people miners marrying or co-habiting with European women, in Northern Tasmania. However, few other Chinese immigrants and this probably led to many Chinese immigrants remaining appear before the 1860s, and these early immigrants are not in the colony even after the decline of small-scale alluvial representative of the later infl ux of Chinese miners..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Biological Conservation 232 (2019) 187–193
    Biological Conservation 232 (2019) 187–193 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon A palaeontological perspective on the proposal to reintroduce Tasmanian devils to mainland Australia to suppress invasive predators T ⁎ Michael C. Westawaya, , Gilbert Priceb, Tony Miscamblec, Jane McDonaldb, Jonathon Crambb, ⁎ Jeremy Ringmad, Rainer Grüna, Darryl Jonesa, Mark Collarde, a Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Environmental Futures Research Institute, N13 Environment 2 Building, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Brisbane, Queensland 4111, Australia b School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia c School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia d College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 2500 Campus Road, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822, USA e Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: The diversity of Australia's mammalian fauna has decreased markedly since European colonisation. Species in Australia the small-to-medium body size range have been particularly badly affected. Feral cats and foxes have played a Invasive predator central role in this decline and consequently strategies for reducing their numbers are being evaluated. One such Fossil record strategy is the reintroduction to the mainland of the Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii. Here, we provide a Feral cat palaeontological perspective on this proposal. We begin by collating published records of devil remains in Fox Quaternary deposits. These data show that the range of devils once spanned all the main ecological zones in Tasmanian devil Sarcophilus Australia.
    [Show full text]
  • Satellite Detection of Orographic Gravity-Wave Activity in the Winter Subtropical Stratosphere Over Australia and Africa S
    https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140011187 2019-08-31T19:50:39+00:00Z GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L21807, doi:10.1029/2012GL053791, 2012 Satellite detection of orographic gravity-wave activity in the winter subtropical stratosphere over Australia and Africa S. D. Eckermann1 and D. L. Wu2 Received 4 September 2012; revised 2 October 2012; accepted 4 October 2012; published 6 November 2012. [1] Orographic gravity-wave (OGW) parameterizations in [3] Conversely, in the southern winter subtropics (25 – models produce waves over subtropical mountain ranges in 40S), satellite sensors detect few deep stratospheric oro- Australia and Africa that propagate into the stratosphere graphic gravity waves (SOGWs), despite the presence of during austral winter and deposit momentum, affecting greater and more significant orography at these latitudes. weather and climate. Satellite sensors have measured strato- While satellite sensors regularly detect SOGWs over the spheric GWs for over a decade, yet find no evidence of these subtropical Andes [Jiang et al., 2002; Wu, 2004], significant waves. So are parameterizations failing here? Here we argue subtropical orography in Africa and mainland Australia that the short wavelengths of subtropical OGWs place them yields no clear SOGW signatures. Why? near or below the detection limits of satellite sensors. To test [4] The simplest explanation is that there are no waves to this hypothesis, we reanalyze nine years of stratospheric observe. On moving equatorward, prevailing mid-latitude radiances from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) westerlies near the surface and throughout the stratosphere on NASA’s Aqua satellite during austral winter, applying weaken significantly and eventually reverse, reducing new averaging techniques to maximize signal-to-noise and surface forcing and inhibiting SOGW penetration through improve thresholds for OGW detection.
    [Show full text]
  • Island Translocation of the Northern Quoll Dasyurus Hallucatus As A
    Island translocation of the northern quoll Dasyurus hallucatus as a conservation response to the spread of the cane toad Chaunus [Bufo] marinus in the Northern Territory, Australia. Report to The Australian Government’s Natural Heritage Trust February 2008 Island translocation of the northern quoll Dasyurus hallucatus as a conservation response to the spread of the cane toad Chaunus (Bufo) marinus in the Northern Territory, Australia. Report submitted to the Natural Heritage Trust Strategic Reserve Program, as a component of project 2005/162: Monitoring & Management of Cane Toad Impact in the Northern Territory. B.R. Rankmore1,2, A.D. Griffiths1, J.C.Z. Woinarski1, Bruce Lirrwa Ganambarr3, R. Taylor1,4, K. Brennan1, K. Firestone5 and M. Cardoso6 1. Biodiversity Conservation Division, Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts, PO Box 496, Palmerston, NT, Australia, 0831. 2. Present address: Conservation Manager, Tipperary Station, PMB 39, Winnellie, NT 0822 3. Gummar Marthakal Ranger group, PMB 62, Elcho Island via Winnellie NT 0822 4. Present address: Environment Protection and Regulation Division, Department of Environment and Conservation, PO Box 2111, Dubbo, NSW 2830 5. Australasian Conservation Genetics Centre, Zoological Parks Board of NSW, PO Box 20, Mosman, NSW 2088. 6. School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of NSW, Botany Road, Randwick, NSW, 2052 Photos: front cover – Martin Armstrong releasing a founder quoll (photo: Ian Morris); above – Kym Brennan and Lirrwa Ganambarr monitoring quoll condition (photo: Ian Morris) Summary The northern quoll Dasyurus hallucatus has declined rapidly with the spread of the cane toad Chaunus [Bufo] marinus across northern Australia, and is now listed as endangered.
    [Show full text]
  • Read and Respond-Australia
    Read and Respond-Australia Directions: Read and highlight the answers to each section on Australia. Write out your answers to each question in complete sentences. Geography of Australia Australia, the world’s smallest continent, is located southeast of the Asian mainland in a region known as Oceania. It is situated between the Indian Ocean (west) and the Pacific Ocean (east.) The Coral Sea, an extension of the Pacific Ocean, lies off Australia’s northeast coast. It is home to the Great Barrier Reef, which is Earth’s largest coral reef. Extending for some 1,200 miles, the Great Barrier Reef is home to thousands of species of fish and mollusks (e.g., snails, clams, octopi), as well as over 400 types of coral! The Great Dividing Range, located along the eastern coast of Australia, is the continent’s largest mountain range. At over 2,100 miles, it is the third longest mountain range in the world. Dominating the landscape of western and central Australia is the Great Victoria Desert. Named for the British monarch Queen Victoria in 1875, it covers more than 160,000 square miles of terrain, which is to say nearly 4.5% of the continent! Nestled in the eastern extent of the Great Victoria Desert, in central Australia, is Ayers Rock – or Uluru (oo-loo-ROO) as it is called by the Australian Aborigines. This six-mile-wide, nearly twelve-story rock formation is composed of sandstone and feldspar. Iron present in Ayers Rock causes it to rust at the surface and turn a reddish color. Uluru plays a prominent role in local Aboriginal creation myths and their culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Giving Young
    Giving young Tas ma say nians their on n the D ania Re raft Tasm n newa Pla ble Energy Action Contents Minister’s comments ............................................................................1 Talking with children and young people ..........................................3 Survey questions ...................................................................................4 Definitions of key terms .....................................................................5 Renewable Energy in Tasmania .........................................................6 Why do we need a Renewable Energy Action Plan? .............. 7 Tasmanian Renewable Energy Target (TRET) ...............................8 Turning Tasmania into a global renewable energy powerhouse (Priority 1) ...................................9 How does pumped hydro energy storage work? .......................13 How is green hydrogen produced? .................................................17 Making energy work for the Tasmanian community (Priority 2) .................................. 23 Growing the economy and providing jobs (Priority 3) ............. 26 Minister’s comments Renewable energy is important. It’s clean, sustainable and can help manage climate change. Tasmania is Australia’s first state when it comes to renewable energy. We have some of the best water and wind resources in the world that are helping us build a renewable energy industry for the future. We are doing so well that we will soon be producing enough renewable energy for all of the houses and businesses in Tasmania. It means Tasmanians will be able to say our electricity is 100 per cent renewable. That’s a record for Australia and up there with only a handful of countries around the world. Not only is it great that Tasmania will soon be producing enough clean renewable energy for all Australia’s energy industry is also changing. As a Tasmanians, but we can produce even more. In fact country we are introducing more and more renewable we have so much renewable energy ready to be energy from natural resources like wind and solar.
    [Show full text]
  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Guide to Terminology
    Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Guide to terminology The purpose of this document is to provide PHAA staff and other representatives with guidance on appropriate word usage referring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities. It is important that the PHAA has a singular public image and how we refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will inform that public image. This document is to be used for all internal and external communications including but not limited to reports, policy and consensus statements, media releases and social media. Any questions regarding this guide should be directed to PHAA Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander SIG Convenors (contact details below). Positive framing intention It is important that when writing about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that the tone and framing is not deficit focused. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face disadvantage however there are many strengths within communities. It is important to reflect those strengths in the language we use. Terminology and when to use it Aboriginal: Is used if referring to the original habitants of mainland Australia or Tasmania. Social media: An appropriate term for social media (eg. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc) Note style guide: “Aboriginal” must always start with a capital “A”. The word Aboriginal should not be used as a noun – but only as an adjective. Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation: Preferred term to describe organisations which provides holistic Primary Health Care and are run by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. To be considered an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (ACCHO) the organisation’s Board must only have people who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.
    [Show full text]
  • Reintroduction of Tasmanian Devils to Mainland Australia Can Restore Top-Down Control in Ecosystems Where Dingoes Have Been Extirpated
    Biological Conservation 191 (2015) 428–435 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bioc Reintroduction of Tasmanian devils to mainland Australia can restore top-down control in ecosystems where dingoes have been extirpated Daniel O. Hunter a,⁎,ThomasBritzb, Menna Jones c,MikeLetnica a Centre for Ecosystem Science, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Sydney, Australia b School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Sydney, Australia c Department of Zoology, University of Tasmania, Tasmania 7001, Hobart, Australia article info abstract Article history: Restoring missing ecological interactions by reintroducing locally extinct species or ecological surrogates for ex- Received 16 February 2015 tinct species has been mooted as an approach to restore ecosystems. Australia's apex predator, the dingo, is sub- Received in revised form 21 July 2015 ject to culling in order to prevent attacks on livestock. Dingo culling has been linked to ecological cascades Accepted 24 July 2015 evidenced by irruptions of herbivores and introduced mesopredators and declines of small and medium sized Available online xxxx mammals. Maintenance of dingo populations is untenable for land-managers in many parts of Australia owing to their depredations on livestock. However, it may be possible to fill the apex predator niche with the Tasmanian Keywords: Rewilding devil which has less impact on livestock. Devils once occurred throughout Australia, but became extinct from the Trophic cascades mainland about 3000 years ago, but are now threatened by a disease epidemic in Tasmania. To explore the fea- Predator diversity sibility of reintroducing devils to mainland Australia we used species distribution models (SDMs) to determine Tasmanian devils if suitable climatic conditions for devils exist and fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to predict the effects of devil Dingoes reintroduction.
    [Show full text]
  • Biodiversity Conservation on the Tiwi Islands, Northern Territory
    BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION ON THE TIWI ISLANDS, NORTHERN TERRITORY: Part 2. Fauna Report prepared by John Woinarski, Kym Brennan, Craig Hempel, Martin Armstrong, Damian Milne and Ray Chatto. Darwin, June 2003 Cover photograph. The False Water-rat Xeromys myoides. This Vulnerable species is known in the Northern Territory from six locations, including the Tiwi Islands. (Photo: Alex Dudley). i SUMMARY This is the second part of a three part report describing the biodiversity of the Tiwi Islands, and options for its conservation and management. The first part describes the Islands, their environments and plants. This part describes the fauna of the Tiwi Islands, and highlights the conservation values of that fauna. This report is concerned principally with terrestrial vertebrate fauna (frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals), and provides only limited information on fish, freshwater systems, marine systems and invertebrates. While Tiwi Aboriginal people have long held a deep knowledge of the fauna of their lands, this knowledge has only recently been documented. Scientific knowledge of the Tiwi fauna has improved substantially over the last decade. Until then, the most substantial contributions had come from collections, mostly of birds and mammals, in the period 1910-1920, that had provided a surprisingly thorough inventory of these groups. In this report we have collated all accessible information on the fauna of these Islands, and describe results from a major study undertaken over the last few years. This study has greatly increased the amount of information on the distribution, abundance, ecology and conservation status of the Tiwi Islands fauna. The Tiwi invertebrate fauna remains poorly known.
    [Show full text]
  • Recent Evidence of Changing Settlement Patterns in New South Wales
    University of Wollongong Research Online Wollongong Studies in Geography Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities 1982 Recent evidence of changing settlement patterns in New South Wales C. L. Keys University of Wollongong Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/wollgeo Recommended Citation Keys, C. L., "Recent evidence of changing settlement patterns in New South Wales" (1982). Wollongong Studies in Geography. 8. https://ro.uow.edu.au/wollgeo/8 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Recent evidence of changing settlement patterns in New South Wales Abstract New South Wales, like the other mainland states of Australia, has traditionally been associated with a condition of metropolitan primacy (Rose. 1966). Moreover. the degree to which Sydney and the other capital cities have dominated the populations of their respective states has increased almost without interruption since the latter part of the nineteenth century, leading to the situation of the early 1970s in which three out of every five people in mainland Australia resided in a state capital. Outside these primate cities some urban centres have experienced short periods of explosive growth. but for most the rule has been either stagnation or slow growth. Rural Australia, meanwhile, has seen its proportion of the national population fall considerably. In 1921 more than a third of the nation's people lived outside the urban centres; fifty earsy later this proportion had declined to less than one seventh. Publication Details This report was originally published as Keys, CL, Recent evidence of changing settlement patterns in New South Wales, Wollongong Studies in Geography No.8, Department of Geography, University of Wollongong, 1980, 4p.
    [Show full text]
  • Biogeography and Phylogeny of the Eutheria
    FAUNA of AUSTRALIA 36. BIOGEOGRAPHY AND PHYLOGENY OF EUTHERIA G.M. MCKAY, J.H. CALABY & L.S. HALL 1 36. BIOGEOGRAPHY AND PHYLOGENY OF EUTHERIA 2 36. BIOGEOGRAPHY AND PHYLOGENY OF EUTHERIA INTRODUCTION In considering the biogeography and phylogeny of the eutherian mammals in Australia, a distinction must be made between those groups which invaded the continent prior to the 18th Century and those that have been deliberately or inadvertently introduced since then. For the latter group, the worldwide distribution and fossil history is essentially irrelevant except that many species have a long association with humans as either domesticated animals or commensals. In this chapter, we will address the more general questions of the origins and affinities of the native Australian eutherians. For details of the biogeography, fossil history and affinities of the introduced mammals, the reader should refer to the family accounts (Chapters 44–46, 54, 55, 58–62). Any examination of the phylogeny of a group must consider two main lines of evidence: the fossil record and the study of living forms. Morphological studies can be made on both living and fossil forms and such studies, particularly of skeletal and dental characters, have traditionally formed the basis for phylogenetic reconstruction in the Mammalia. In recent years there has been an increase in biochemical and molecular studies on living species which, with a very few exceptions, cannot be compared to extinct species. To date, only a relatively few species of living mammals have been studied adequately using molecular techniques, but attempts are being made to reconcile the biochemical data with the traditional morphological studies (Shoshani 1986; McKenna 1987).
    [Show full text]
  • Australia, September 2005
    Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile: Australia, September 2005 COUNTRY PROFILE: AUSTRALIA September 2005 COUNTRY Formal Name: Commonwealth of Australia. Short Form: Australia. Term for Citizen(s): Australian(s). Capital: Canberra. Major Cities: In order of size, the largest cities in Australia are Sydney (4.2 million), Melbourne (3.6 million), Brisbane (1.7 million), Perth (1.4 million), and Canberra (323,000). Independence: The British colonies of Australia were federated and the Commonwealth of Australia established on January 1, 1901. Public Holidays: New Year’s Day (January 1); Australia Day (January 26); Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday (variable dates in March or April); ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day (April 25); Queen’s Birthday (June 13); Christmas Day (December 25); and Boxing Day (December 26). Flag: The Australian flag is a blue rectangle with the flag of the United Kingdom located on the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Commonwealth Star on the lower hoist-side quadrant. The remaining half of the flag is a representation of the Southern Cross constellation, with one small Click to Enlarge Image five-pointed star and four larger, seven-pointed stars. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Australian Prehistory: Humans are thought to have arrived in Australia about 30,000 years ago. The original inhabitants, who have descendants to this day, are known as aborigines. In the eighteenth century, the aboriginal population was about 300,000. The aborigines, who have been described alternately as nomadic hunter-gatherers and fire-stick farmers (known for using fire to clear the brush and attract grass-eating animals instead of cultivating the land), settled primarily in the well-watered coastal areas.
    [Show full text]
  • Mainland Tassie Devils
    Episode 28 Teacher Resource 13th October 2020 Mainland Tassie Devils Students will develop a deeper 1. About how long has it been since Tasmanian devils lived in the wild understanding of the issues on the mainland of Australia? facing Tasmanian devil a. 300 years populations in Australia. Students b. 3,000 years will learn about solutions that scientists are finding to help c. 30,000 years protect Australian animals. 2. Which celebrity is involved in the Tassie devil rewilding program? 3. Where in Australia is the rewilding program? 4. Why did Tassie devils die out on the mainland? 5. Which introduced species impacted on the Tassie devils? 6. What disease has reduced the devil’s population by 90%? 7. What does rewilding mean? Science – Year 4 Living things have life cycles. 8. Tassie devils are the world’s biggest meat-eating marsupials. True or false? Living things depend on each other and the environment to 9. Finish the following sentence: Tasmanian devils could help to control survive. introduced species like… Science – Year 5 10. What was surprising about this story? Living things have structural features and adaptations that help them to survive in their environment. Science – Year 6 Discussion The growth and survival of living Before watching the BTN Mainland Tassie Devils story students will respond things are affected by physical to the following... conditions of their environment. • What do you already know about Tasmanian devils? Science – Year 7 • Where can Tasmanian devils be found? Classification helps organise the diverse group of organisms. • What do you want to learn about Tasmanian devils? What do you see, think and wonder? After watching the BTN story, students will respond to the following questions: • What did you SEE in this video? • What do you THINK about what you saw in this video? • What did you LEARN from this story? • What was SURPRISING about this story? Students will then: • Think of a question they would like to ask the researchers featured in the story.
    [Show full text]