thoughts on indigenous chapter; need to have acknowledgement ("written on the land of the Kulin people"? or similar) at the start , but the chapter on indigenous representation doesn't have to be at the start.

because this is not a history or a linear story. and in some ways, the ways of the people who were here before come to one's attention after one (in this case, non-indigenes) has been here for a while.

the first people were, to a large extent, too focussed on looking for what was like where they came from to see what was there. it's only later (and there were exceptions -find?) that they/we took an interest in how the locals had lived before, and what could be learned from them.

back to my idea about the different reasons for figuring things out; for many, it's so that the thing can be controlled. for others, it's so they can learn to live with the thing as it is. I'd put most indigenous mapping/culture in the latter category, though there are examples of technology (fire agriculture, the eel farms).

they didn't just live here before us; they lived here differently from us.

though sometimes not so differently; the way that key sites were reproduced - the MCG - was the particular nature of the site reproduced - and the story about an old tree on the site of St Paul's - is it a carrying on of the sacredness, or was it just that that tree protected the site so long that it was all that was left by the time they came to build the cathedral?