populations.
Just as the west coast bands adapted by building fully enclosed huts to cope with the weather, so too the western thylacines might have adapted to their harsher surrounds (although devils show no evidence of such adaptations). Paddle notes that western thylacines may have been darker than their more temperate relatives:
It has been suggested that both size and background colour were associated with thylacine habitat preference, and hence particular subpopulations of the species . . . Such suggestions, that rainforest specimens were darker than those living in the drier, more open central plateau or coast, and that a larger body mass was associated with living in colder, more extreme environments, are not unusual for any mammal. 9
The Aboriginesâ huts were built in groups at intervals along the west coast and were permanent bases. Evidence of them exists in the form of âhut pitsâ: circular depressions dug into the soil. The dwellings were constructed over these pits, from a framework of poles bent into a dome shape and thatched with grass and bark. Groups of huts were also built on the cold central plateau. Although a retiring and elusive animal, the thylacine was known to be inquisitive about humans, even if this was only when they had food about them. But that is the first step in semi-domestication. Hand-reared thylacines apparently made manageable pets. They did not have the antisocial nature of the devil. It is not impossible to imagine a permanently settled village having a nearby, non-threatening thylacine presence, the animals waiting to feed on offal and carcasses. But any such relationship would have ceased once Aborigines adopted dogs in large numbers in the early 1800s.
Mount Wellington and Hobart Town from Kangaroo Point 1831â33 , by John Glover, oil on canvas. One of Gloverâs earliest and most important works, the Aborigines it depicts, the last of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, were rounded up by George Robinson and taken to Hobart. (Collection Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery/National Gallery of Australia)
In contrast to their southern coastal neighbours, the bands of the North-West Tribe numbered perhaps as many as 600 people, making them the second most populous tribe. Five of their eight bands were associated with the extreme north-west, which included a swathe inland to the mountains. This was a particularly fertile area. The coastal lands and islands were rich in maritime foods, such as elephant seals and muttonbirds, and seasonal swan and duck eggs from the lagoons, as well as the usual macropods. The people âmoved seasonally up and down the coast, travelling along well-marked footpaths or roads to gain easy access through swampy country covered with dense scrubâ, and further east they used to travel âregularly into the high inland country belonging to the North people, particularly to the Surrey and Hampshire Hills region to collect ochre. They travelled through a chain of open plains kept clear by regular firingâ. 10
These deliberately created alterations to the land, for ease of passage, would inevitably suit animals on the move, in the way that, for example, elephant herds bashing clearings through the jungle create pathways and light and thereby openings for other faunal (and floral) species. It was land management of a kind that encouraged, rather than frightened off, animals. Cruel proof of the thylacineâs active presence in this fertile corner of the island was to come later, with the establishment of the Van Diemenâs Land Company and its disastrous sheep runs on those same Surrey and Hampshire plains. The Company, headquartered at Wool-north at the north-west tip of the island, was to institute the first thylacine bounty scheme. The Company, so its directors claimed, was being greatly harmed by thylacine predations upon its sheep.
East of the mountain ranges, the islandâs next distinct geographic region is
Just as the west coast bands adapted by building fully enclosed huts to cope with the weather, so too the western thylacines might have adapted to their harsher surrounds (although devils show no evidence of such adaptations). Paddle notes that western thylacines may have been darker than their more temperate relatives:
It has been suggested that both size and background colour were associated with thylacine habitat preference, and hence particular subpopulations of the species . . . Such suggestions, that rainforest specimens were darker than those living in the drier, more open central plateau or coast, and that a larger body mass was associated with living in colder, more extreme environments, are not unusual for any mammal. 9
The Aboriginesâ huts were built in groups at intervals along the west coast and were permanent bases. Evidence of them exists in the form of âhut pitsâ: circular depressions dug into the soil. The dwellings were constructed over these pits, from a framework of poles bent into a dome shape and thatched with grass and bark. Groups of huts were also built on the cold central plateau. Although a retiring and elusive animal, the thylacine was known to be inquisitive about humans, even if this was only when they had food about them. But that is the first step in semi-domestication. Hand-reared thylacines apparently made manageable pets. They did not have the antisocial nature of the devil. It is not impossible to imagine a permanently settled village having a nearby, non-threatening thylacine presence, the animals waiting to feed on offal and carcasses. But any such relationship would have ceased once Aborigines adopted dogs in large numbers in the early 1800s.
Mount Wellington and Hobart Town from Kangaroo Point 1831â33 , by John Glover, oil on canvas. One of Gloverâs earliest and most important works, the Aborigines it depicts, the last of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, were rounded up by George Robinson and taken to Hobart. (Collection Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery/National Gallery of Australia)
In contrast to their southern coastal neighbours, the bands of the North-West Tribe numbered perhaps as many as 600 people, making them the second most populous tribe. Five of their eight bands were associated with the extreme north-west, which included a swathe inland to the mountains. This was a particularly fertile area. The coastal lands and islands were rich in maritime foods, such as elephant seals and muttonbirds, and seasonal swan and duck eggs from the lagoons, as well as the usual macropods. The people âmoved seasonally up and down the coast, travelling along well-marked footpaths or roads to gain easy access through swampy country covered with dense scrubâ, and further east they used to travel âregularly into the high inland country belonging to the North people, particularly to the Surrey and Hampshire Hills region to collect ochre. They travelled through a chain of open plains kept clear by regular firingâ. 10
These deliberately created alterations to the land, for ease of passage, would inevitably suit animals on the move, in the way that, for example, elephant herds bashing clearings through the jungle create pathways and light and thereby openings for other faunal (and floral) species. It was land management of a kind that encouraged, rather than frightened off, animals. Cruel proof of the thylacineâs active presence in this fertile corner of the island was to come later, with the establishment of the Van Diemenâs Land Company and its disastrous sheep runs on those same Surrey and Hampshire plains. The Company, headquartered at Wool-north at the north-west tip of the island, was to institute the first thylacine bounty scheme. The Company, so its directors claimed, was being greatly harmed by thylacine predations upon its sheep.
East of the mountain ranges, the islandâs next distinct geographic region is
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