Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert

Australian Aborigines are legendary hunters and trackers. However, few people have more than a sketchy idea of the skills they have to master from early childhood onwards. The people of the deserts that make up the centre of Australia adapted to one of the most marginal environments on earth, with no technology to assist them but what they could make with their own hands. This book describes the hunting lifestyle of desert people, both before European contact and today. It discusses the art of tracking in some detail, and shows how it is one facet of a composite of knowledge, which includes an intimate understanding of animal behaviour, an excellent memory and a faultless sense of direction. It also shows how people use selected items of modem technology to pursue their traditional aims. The author discusses the debt owed by the police to Aboriginal trackers, and offers new insights into well-known events such as the Azaria Chamberlain saga and the more recent search for American Robert Bogucki. Written by a woman who lived with her Walmajarri partner for more than three years in a small desert camp, has travelled in the Great Sandy Desert with some of its former inhabitants, dug waterholes and taken part in many hunts, this book is also a very personal account of her observations and experiences. The author illustrates the abilities and qualities she describes with telling anecdotes of her own, often humorous, which give the book an immediacy sometimes lacking in more scholarly, anthropological accounts.