Addition to Update #34: According to our roomies from India: New Delhi population is about the same as the whole of Australia and India's population is growing at a rate of adding the whole of Australia each year!!
Update 35
We're waiting out the cloudy weather...so today we bused to Tjapukai Center. We find learning about the Aborigines fascinating! The Djabugay was the local tribe near Cairns. Members of their tribe proudly put on several interesting demonstrations about their food, medicine, weapons, making & playing the didgeridoo. Also they performed several dances including the creation story...which included a man killing his brother...sound familiar? The beat and rhythm of the music was powerful. Since there was a small crowd, we were able to spend time talking to many of the Djabugay performers. Some of them just seemed to accept the changes the Westerners caused. Others were angry. But one's words will stay with me: "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish to be there...back in the bush."
Here's some of what we learned today about the Djabugay:
-Today there life expectancy is about 20 yrs less than the rest of the Australians. 200 hundred years ago the average Djabugay lived to be about 100.
-500 tribes lived mostly peacefully in Australia
-2000 languages were used...only 275 left.
-There was no word for thank you as sharing was the expected behavior within family and trading happened between groups.
-A man was allowed 10 wives which kept the population up.
-Today Djabugay men prefer to marry white women so they no longer will be expected to share all they have.
Here's what I found on Wiki:
At the time of first European contact, it is estimated that between 315,000 and 750,000 people lived in Australia, with upper estimates being as high as 1.25 million. A cumulative population of 1.6 billion people has been estimated to have lived in Australia over 70,000 years prior to British colonisation.
The combination of disease, loss of land and direct violence reduced the Aboriginal population by an estimated 90% between 1788 and 1900.
