Australian Alps education kit
Australian Alps Liaison Committee, November 2005
Vegetation in the Australian Alps
Plants provide Aboriginal people with food, fibre, medicine, shelter and tools. Most plants have a song, story, dance and ceremony associated with it. Each plant also has a group of people who have a responsibility to care for and control the use of that plant and the animals linked to it. Some plants are used only by women while others are associated with men.
Plants are used in a similar, if not the same way, wherever they grow across Australia. For example, eucalypts provide weapons and utensils, shelter, firewood, charcoal for art and sap for medicine and tanning skins.
Plants that grow at high altitudes are only accessible during summer and this is why there were large gatherings of Aboriginal people in the mountains during the warmer months. The Australian Alps provided a plentiful supply of seeds, berries, nectar and roots to eat and a supply of medicines that were not available at lower altitudes. The bark of some shrubs were used to make string nets to catch Bogong Moths and plants also provided shelter and food for a variety of animals that were also useful to Aboriginal people.
The life cycle of some plants indicate the availability of food resources elsewhere and sometimes dictated the movement of people. For example, the end of the flowering season of one species may indicate that it was time for one group of people to leave an area and another to arrive or a certain species of wattle flowering indicates fish are plentiful somewhere else.
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