Download The Last of the Nomads

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The Last of the Nomads

Download The Last of the Nomads

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About the Author

W.J. Peasley was born in the central west of New South Wales and spent his boyhood on his father’s farm. While working as a flying doctor in Western Australia he developed a strong interest in Indigenous history.

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Product details

Paperback: 176 pages

Publisher: Fremantle Press; None edition (December 1, 2005)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780949206879

ISBN-13: 978-0949206879

ASIN: 0949206873

Product Dimensions:

5.5 x 0.5 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.6 out of 5 stars

7 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#1,027,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

I loved this book. It describes the search for the last two members of a tribe of Aborigine nomads that have remained in the nomadic life in Australia. The time is during a great drought and their tribe members who have moved to towns are extremely concerned about their welfare. It is a beautiful love story as well as a book about a rescue mission. The wonderful descriptions of the Australian landscape and the finds along the way of the search party are beautiful. There are also historic references that taught me much about Australia and its native people. Not a book for everyone, perhaps, as it is detailed in small aspects of the search and may be considered plodding or slow by some. I highly recommend it for lovers of anthropology and ethnology as well as history and geography.

Interesting story. I did not realized, until I got it, that it was printed with GIANT type for people with challenged vision.

Having with product, ease of ordering the prompt delivery. Thanks

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to Yatungka and her husband Warri, the last two Mandildjara people to live in the traditional way on the Western Gibson Desert of Australia. William Peasley wrote their saga in The Last of the Nomads.Aborigines have one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth. They have lived in Australia for at least 40,000 years, some say 60,000. Nomads first inhabited the more fertile regions, leaving the deserts for later. Folks have lived in the Gibson for maybe 20,000 years. Most readers, if dropped off in the Gibson, naked, with a spear and boomerang, would be dead in a day or three. Water is extremely scarce. For the paleface colonizers, the desert is dangerous, miserable, a land of horrors. For Aborigines, it was home sweet home, where they belonged, a sacred place. They had an intimate understanding of the land, and learned how to live in balance with it.Yatungka and Warri spent most of their adult lives as pariahs, because their relationship violated a tribal law that defined permitted and forbidden marriages. Laws were taken very seriously. If they returned to their people, they might be beaten, or even killed. So, their family lived away from the tribe, wandering from waterhole to waterhole, hunting and foraging.In the 1950s and 1960s, the government made efforts to move the Aborigines into settlements, where intense culture shock led many to lose their identity, become massively depressed alcoholics, and abandon their ancient traditions. The sons and kinfolk who stayed with Yatungka and Warri eventually moved off to civilization, but the outlaw couple feared to join them.Anyway, in 1977, it was the third year of an extreme drought, the worst in a century, maybe the worst in many centuries. The kinfolk of the outlaw couple were worried about them. Mudjon was a respected elder who had been raised on the desert in the traditional way. He knew all the waterholes, and cared about Yatungka and Warri. His dream was to take the Mandildjara people back to their desert paradise, return to the old ways, and preserve their traditions. Few of the young were interested.Mudjon asked a white friend to help him search for the couple, and he agreed. Mudjon was joined by five white lads, including Peasley. They loaded up three vehicles and took off across the vast roadless desert. Mudjon knew that this was probably his last visit to the territory of his people, and the last time a traditional Aborigine would drink from each well, or leave footprints in the dirt. Peasley noted, “It was very sad for him to move through the land where once his people hunted and laughed and sang around the campfires.”The chapters describing the long search contain some fascinating passages about the old way of life. Mudjon was a master at reading the land, noticing the countless slight details that provided strong and detailed messages to him, but were invisible to the whites. Without a map for the 1,500 km (932 mi) journey, he guided the team from waterhole to waterhole, looking for signs of the couple. It was a powerful experience for him, to see old campsites, windbreaks, caves, springs, rock paintings, and other artifacts — the remains of an ancient culture.Eventually they found signs of the missing couple. At several locations, Mudjon started a brushfire that sent smoke high into the sky, where it would have been visible from up to 160 km (99 mi) away. Warri did not respond with a smoke signal.It was an ancient custom of the desert people to routinely light brushfires as they journeyed from waterhole to waterhole. This had three benefits. (1) Fire flushed out hidden game. (2) It signaled their progress to other groups. (3) It regenerated the earth and stimulated plant growth. Fresh green sprouts attracted game. Wildlife became dependent on burning. This was called firestick farming. In recent decades, in regions no longer visited, the burning has ceased, the water holes are not kept cleared, and animal and bird life largely disappeared.One happy day, they saw smoke from Warri, and drove to his campsite. When Mudjon greeted him, there were no smiles, hugs, or handshakes. Warri was about 150 cm (5 ft) tall, naked, extremely thin, and both eyes were inflamed. He wasn’t strong enough to hunt, so they were living on quandongs (peach-like fruit). Yatungka returned from foraging with several dingo dogs. She displayed no signs of excitement. She was about 165 cm (5’ 5”) tall, younger, naked, very thin, but in much better physical condition.They would not survive much longer at the waterhole. The rescue party knew that the nearest well that still had some water was 150 km (93 mi) away, an impossible journey on foot. The couple agreed to return to the Wiluna settlement with Mudjon and company. They wanted to see their sons again. Mudjon assured them that there would be no drama about the taboo violated long ago.In Wiluna, many folks came to look at the long-missing couple, and were stunned to see their emaciated condition. “There were no greetings, no shouts of joy, in fact there was no sign of recognition on either side, and yet the sons of Warri and Yatungka were within a few meters of their parents.” Tears streamed down the cheeks of Warri and many others. A few months later, Mudjon got very sick, declined, and died. A year after their return, Warri and Yatungka caught a disease. He died in April 1979, and she died a few weeks later.For me, this was a powerful book, not primarily for what it said, but for the silent message unperceived by the white heroes who came to the rescue. Peasley spent his boyhood on a farm in Australia, and he sometimes discovered signs of prehistoric campsites. He felt sad that, after more than 40,000 years on the land, the people had not been able to leave behind anything more significant than simple campsites, grinding stones, rock paintings, and so on.For me, this low impact living was an amazing achievement. They successfully adapted to a hot dry ecosystem, and it was a wonderful home for them. What a terrible problem! The Gibson Desert that the rescue party drove across looked nearly the same as it did 1,000 years ago, or 10,000. The silent message screams “genuine sustainability, beautiful, healthy culture!”Humans are also capable of adapting to godforsaken nightmares like Chicago, jammed together with millions of isolated, anxious, stressed out, depressed strangers… ah, the wonders of progress! The rescue party was proud of their advanced technology, which gave them the ability to dominate, exploit, and rubbish the continent. What significant artifacts will they leave behind to impress the youngsters of generations yet to be born? Will the land be in no worse condition in another 1,000 or 10,000 years? These questions are taboo, heresy in a culture whose god-word is Growth.Peasley did confess to having some uncomfortable thoughts. When the rescue party knew that the couple was alive and nearby, he realized, “We were about to intrude into the lives of the last nomadic people in the Western Gibson Desert, and in doing so, it was possible that we might be responsible for bringing to an end a way of life that had gone on for several thousand years.”

The Last of the Nomads is both a travel adventure and a testimonial to enduring companionship.The Western Gibson Desert in Western Australia is one of the most rugged, isolated places in Australia, a great expanse of sandhills running parallel to the horizon with vast open spinifex plains. There are no mountains, no rivers, and few landmarks in the arid, hot desert of gravel. It was home to many indigenous tribes: Budidjara, Gadudjara, Mandildjara, Ngadadjara, Wanwan, and others. By the mid-1970s, “for the first time in possibly twenty thousand years, there were no Aboriginal people ranging across these tribal lands.” Although people had left their land to join missions and settlements further south, two people remained. They were the last of the nomads, the last of the Mandildjara tribe.Warri Kyangu and his wife, Yatungka, of the Mandildjara, chose to remain on their ancestral land in the Gibson Desert. They had their reasons. They were outsiders, fearful of traditional punishment for breaking the marriage laws. They had married each other. They had married within their section of the tribe, which was against tribal law. Yatungka was born a Burungu and she should have married a Milanjga. Warri was born a Yiparka and should have married a Djararu or a Milanjga woman. To avoid punishment, they fled their community and travelled the desert together, never leaving each other’s side. Their friend, Mudjon, was sent to find them. He never did. Even their four sons eventually left their ancestral land, and their parents.Hence, over time, when all of their kinsfolk had left the Western Gibson Desert lands, they remained. “War, famine, revolution, acts of terrorism, things of great moment for civilisation meant nothing to that man and woman.”But in the mid 1970s, a drought of devastating proportions spread across the central and western deserts – the worst in living memory. Fearful that the couple were still walking the desert, without water and food, the elders of the Mandildjara tribe sought the help of Europeans to find Warri and Yatungka, now old and in danger.In August 1977, for a month, the author and four other non-indigenous men, with the aid of Mudjon (now an elder), three 4-wheel drive vehicles, 1319 litres of fuel, and 637 litres of water, set out to find Warri and Yatungka. Travelling over 1500 kilometres of the most inhospitable land in the country, they went from water hole to water well to water bore.This is a true story. The author had his critics. Of his critics, Peasley would ask two questions: “What manner of man or woman would refuse to undertake a search when requested by Aboriginal elders, desperately anxious about the safety of two of their kinsfolk?” And, if found, “who, after undertaking a long search … would be prepared to leave them in the desert to die alone” emaciated and ill, without adequate food and water? If Warri and Yatungka left their land, there would be none left of the Mandildjara in the Western Gibson Desert. This is the account of the search, the landscape of the desert, the psychology of tracker Mudjon, and the dilemma of the Mandildjara elders. It is a great book.

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