ABSTRACT
Stanner (1968: p. 47) made a perceptive observation about violence in Aboriginal Australia.
My records about the pre-Mission era support this view, but, in 1966, violence on Momington Island was in many respects different from the traditional scene. Violence had taken a quantum leap, but a positive feature was that it was not lethal as it sometimes was in the past and as it would frequently be in the future. The people were not used to living in what was to them a large settlement of 628 persons. They complained about the smoke from the many camp fires as if they were living in an industrial zone. In the pre-Mission period the Lardil territory of about 310 square miles supported 230 persons with a population density of approximately 0.7 to the square mile. Although people were not restricted to living only in their own Country, neither were they continuously on the move roaming about Momington at will - it was something in between. There were seldom more than 30 persons in a camp, and often considerably fewer, consisting mainly of close members of an extended family. There was normally a base camp from which people dispersed for a day’s hunting and to which they returned in the evening. If there was conflict people could easily shift camp and if necessary leave their Country and live with maternal relatives. In some periods as in the dulnhu, panja, and water lily seasons, there were larger camps but they only lasted for a few weeks at the most. Even in these fairly homogeneous camps there was always the possibility of violence as Gully reminds us when Myall Jimi became angry about his poor dulnhu catch.
