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Abstract
Traditional knowledge, oral instruction and stylised mapping were all important to Australian Aborigines in defining the type of water supplies available in a particular region, and assisting in their location. Observations of birds, especially the more sedentary species such as the zebra finch (Poephila guttata), could be significant. Specific sources of water utilized by indigenous people included; flooded gnammas (rock-holes), soakage-wells in permeable sediments, clay dams, flooded claypans, riverine waterholes, mound springs, rain-water accumulated in tree hollows (especially in Allocasuarina decaisneana), water from excavated tree roots (especially from mallee eucalypts), dew, and water from the body of the water-holding frog (Cyclorana platycephala).
Introduction
The ability of Australian indigenous people to survive in the desert regions where rainfall is low (<200 mm pa), episodic and unreliable, and evaporation is exceptionally high (>3,000 mm pa), has long excited the popular imagination. Most of the early European explorers expressed awe and wonder at the extraordinary ability of Aborigines to survive in what they regarded as hostile if not "impossible" regions. So great was the respect of early explorers for the water-locating ability of Aborigines that several of them (e.g. Austin 1856; Calvert 1897; Carnegie 1898; Wells 1899) felt obliged to adopt the extreme and ethically-repugnant measure of depriving Aborigines of their liberty and forcing them to find water. After being deserted by some Aborigines in the Gibson Desert in 1897, Wells (1899) wrote "I then regretted not having chained one of the tribe [a practice adopted by him in December 1896], in spite of my promise to the contrary, for without a [Black] guide in such country one is almost powerless". Reading today about incidents such as this serves as a timely reminder that there has been a strong and unfortunate tendency not to give proper recognition to the key importance of Aboriginal knowledge in the exploration and development of Australia (cf Reynolds 1990).
One human physiological imperative is an adequate intake of water. Hence the adage "water is life" or, as Giles (1889, v1, p292) put it, "Life for water he [the explorer] will at any moment give, for water cannot be done without". Despite the often meagre nature of water resources, desert Aborigines were, as a rule, able to satisfy this physiological imperative....