Australia's Garden of Eden

In the 1st Edition of my autobiography Rotor in the Green I related how I became involved with Bush Tucker Man Les Hiddins, and flew the filming and support helicopter for two episodes of the very popular series of the same name. As such, Les, myself and the ABC film crew worked very closely with a number of Aboriginal communities throughout Queensland and the Northern Territory.

It was my first and only intimate exposure to working with our indigenous people, and for the most part I was saddened by their plight since European settlement. I wrote at the time that, “…Les also learned about the medicines that have sustained the Aboriginal culture for more than 40,000 years, and gained substantial knowledge of bush survival.”

I gave my life to Jesus Christ in 1994, two years before Rotor…was first published in 1996. But it was a very slow learning curve for me and it wasn’t until quite some years later that I came to realise that this figure of 40,000 years was inconsistent with Genesis Chapter 1 of the Bible, which points to an earth age of only around 6,000 years (see Old Earth vs New Earth).

Accordingly, when I re-published Rotor…in the USA in 2007 I removed all reference to this figure, and to other references in the book which were not in line with my new-found belief.

Suzanne and I have just returned to Townsville following a four month “shake-down” trip with our 5th wheeler, as we now prepare to take our Wings As Eagles ministry on the road for a number of years. In our travels so far we have visited remains of Aboriginal sites along the way, from near The Grampians in Victoria to Kakadu in the Northern Territory. We were constantly bombarded with facts and figures which quite honestly don’t stack up when compared to God’s infallible Word.

For example in the Walls of China area of Mungo National Park (part of the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area in south-west New South Wales), we came across a sign stating, “The Walls of China is the large sand and clay dune known as a lunette, appearing in the distance. It is the most significant and well known feature of this area. Evidence of Aboriginal occupation dating back 60,000 years is found in the Willandra Lakes, with significant examples found within the Mungo lunette”. The sign goes on to boast, “…some of the oldest records in the world of people cooking and eating freshwater fish”.

The Kakadu National Park area of the Northern Territory claims, “Aboriginal people have occupied the Kakadu area continuously for at least 40,000 years. Kakadu National Park is renowned for the richness of its Aboriginal cultural sites. There are more than 5,000 recorded art sites illustrating Aboriginal culture over thousands of years. The archaeological sites demonstrate Aboriginal occupation for at least 20,000 and possibly up to 40,000 years.”

Whilst 20,000 and 60,000 years are mentioned above, 40,000 years seems to be the most popular figure being bandied around regarding Aboriginal occupation. But the strange thing is that the Aboriginal rock art we came across in Kakadu has only been dated to relatively recent times. Following is from a Kakadu National Park website regarding rock art dating:

By studying the subjects and art styles and then comparing them with climatic, geological and archaeological evidence, researchers have been able to estimate the age of a number of paintings. Paintings of animals now extinct on the Australian mainland can be assumed to have been done before, or shortly after, these animals disappeared: the long-beaked echidna is thought to have become extinct 15, 000 years ago; the thylacine and Tasmanian devil became extinct more recently, probably about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. Paintings of other animals are linked to specific environmental conditions: estuarine conditions are thought to have begun about 6,000 years ago, so paintings of estuarine fish are probably less than 6,000 years old; the freshwater floodplains developed more recently, so paintings of freshwater birds such as magpie geese are probably less than 1,500 years old.

So on the one hand we are hearing that our indigenous people have been around for up to maybe 60,000 years, but from around 5,000 recorded rock art sites in the one area the best that they can come up with is something supposedly dated at around 15,000 years ago. That’s a lot closer to 6,000 years than 60,000 years, or even 40,000 years for that matter!

An exception to all this was at Lake Tyrrell in north-western Victoria where we came across a sign with the following inscription, “Throughout south-eastern Australia, lunettes contain evidence of Aboriginal occupation. A study of the Lake Tyrrell lunette in 1977-78 recorded 137 cultural sites including hearths, stone scatters and burials. The oldest burial site was dated at 2,300 years before present.” This statement is more consistent with events following The Flood than any example of long Aboriginal history.

To put this in perspective so that we can appreciate the time scale involved, since the First Fleet arrived in 1788 I read that there have been 8 generations of settlers. On the other hand, there has been something like 18,500 generations of Aboriginals.

Although there are no indications as to what the actual Aboriginal population was in 1788, according to a display at the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach, when the first fleet arrived there were 750,000 Aboriginals. From other sources I read a second estimate of around 750,000, and other estimates between 300,000 to 1 million. Lets call it 750,000.

Whoever came up with these figures however has obviously not “done the Maths” (refer Creation vs Evolution – Do the Maths), for the following reasons.

The current population of Australia stands at say 22 million, of which I understand approximately 2.5 % or 550,000 are Indigenous. The producers of the above figures would have us believe then that Australia’s population increased from around 750,000 to 22 million in the space of eight generations.

But according to the above if the Australian Aboriginal equivalent of Adam & Eve somehow appeared on earth by whatever means 40,000 years ago then how come, over 18,500 generations of Aboriginal history, there were only 750,000 present in 1788, and some 200,000 less in 2010?

According to the Maths if Australia’s population increased from 750,000 to 22 million in 200 odd years then why, in 40,000 years of Aboriginal history, did their population only reach 750,000 then actually went backwards in the past 200 years. Many would say that white man wiped out many Aboriginal people, but that is the subject of a completely different issue beyond the scope of this article.

The fact remains that if Australia’s population somehow commenced with our own “Adam & Eve”, then over 40,000 years and at any reasonable population rate increase we would be looking at hundreds of millions of Aboriginals, or the remains thereof, when the First Fleet arrived.

Wings As Eagles

11Jul10