How did Aboriginal coastal communities and inland communities obtain food in early Queensland?

In early Queensland, Aboriginal communities relied on a hunter-gatherer economy, with subsistence strategies dictated by their local environment and seasonal availability of resources.12

Coastal and Inland Patterns

• Coastal Communities: Often described as fishing people, these groups inhabited areas where food resources were more plentiful, allowing for more stable settlement patterns near the coast.3
• Inland and Mountain Communities: Occupying the central and western regions, these groups faced more difficult survival conditions. They typically followed a nomadic lifestyle, moving in small family groups between water holes along well-defined tracks.23

Food Acquisition and Labor

The division of labor was primarily sex-based, with all adults possessing the necessary skills to secure food:2
* Men: Generally focused on hunting large game, such as kangaroos, and were responsible for distributing meat according to kinship obligations.2
* Women: Provided the majority of the food—estimated at 60 to 80 percent of the total diet—by collecting vegetable foods, seeds, and tubers, and hunting small game like lizards.2

Tools such as digging sticks, spears, and stone pounders were essential for foraging and hunting, while ritual knowledge was believed to be vital for the replenishment of natural resources.2