ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the temporal world of classical Australian culture. The term ‘classical’ (Sutton 1989: 7) is used here to denote that period of almost complete continental isolation from the second millennium B.C.E. until the late eighteenth century C.E., during which time Australian civilization had almost no contact with other cultures. After the invasion of the British in 1788 C.E. parts of classical Australian culture survived, though the ecology of that culture – which was founded on notions of faith, land and time – was in the main destroyed in the genocide of the nineteenth century.