Historical Study & Educational Resources, World, Social Sciences, Cultural, Physical 

"...it is a most fortunate accident of history that the paths of a handful of concerned and highly knowledgeable Yaraldi custodians and a pair of young and enthusiastic anthropologists crossed some fifty years ago." This extraordinary book, written from material gathered over half a century ago, will almost certainly be the last fine-grained account of traditional Aboriginal life in settled south-eastern Australia. It re-creates the world of the Yaraldi group of the Kukabrak or Narrinyeri people of the Lower Murray and Lakes region of South Australia. In 1939 Albert Karloan, a Yaraldi man, urged a young eythnologist, Ronald Berndt, to set up camp at Murray Bridge and to record the story of his people. Karloan and Pinkie Mack possessed through personal experience, not merely through hearsay, an all but complete knowledge of traditional life. They were the last of the custodians and they felt the burden of their unique situation. This book represents their concerted efforts to pass on the story of their people to future generations. For Ronald and Catherine Berndt, this was the first fieldwork in an illustrious joint career of fifty years. For long periods, principally until 1943, they laboured with pencil and paper to put it all down. Their fieldnotes were worked into a rough draft of what would become, but not until recently, the finished manuscript. The book's range is encyclopaedic and engrossing -- sometimes dramatic. It encompasses relations between and among individuals and clan groups, land tensure, kinship, the subsistence economy, trade, ceremony, councils, fighting and warfare, rights of passage from conception to death, myths, and beliefs and practices concerning healing and the supernatural. Not least, it is a record of decline following European colonization. "A world that was" is a unique contribution to Australia's cultural history. There is simply no comparable body of work, nor is there ever likely to be. Ronald and Catherine Berndt shared a distinguished career of fifty years, becoming Australia's most respected anthropologists and interpreters of Aboriginal culture. Ronald Berndt was the foundation Professor of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia, a position he held from 1963 to 1981. Catherine Berndt lectured in the same department throughout this period, and has since 1984 been an Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology. Their many jointly written books include The world of the first Australians (1964), The Aboriginal Australians: the first pioneers (1983) and The speaking land: myth and story in Aboriginal Australia (1988). Sadly, Ronald Berndt died in May 1990 -- but with this first and last major work virtually completed, and its publication assured. Dr John Stanton is curator at the Berndt Museum of Anthropology at t. - from Amzon