THE DIERI

Lake Eyre Exchange Networks Pituri

I quiver with rage when I think that it was for racehorses that the Yarawawarka and Dieri people of South Australia were slaughtered and their cultures destroyed. It was only for this that future Australians were deprived of 23 species of native mammals, all driven to extinction in our dry country.
Tim Flannery

"In The World of the First Australians, R M and C H Berndt tell of the muramura beings who wandered over the country creating places, and men. In dry times, particular muramura sang a song to bring the rain and when the country was flooded, placed a boomerang-shaped weapon in the ground to stop the rain. Soon after, the land became rich with plant life and witchetty grubs became plentiful.
Professor Berndt spoke with a Dieri man in 1942. His story recreated the daily life of the people before European contact. It was a life full of meaning, richness of myth providing a background tapestry to 'the desert landscape. Initiation into adulthood was an exciting and fearful experience, the supreme moment coming when the boy's old 'skin' left him and he became a man.
Most of the desert years were not times of great stress. Daylight was passed in gathering foods, yet there was still a great deal of time for religious experience. In severe droughts life became more difficult and at times desperate. Then the very young, the weak and the old died.
From these fragmentary studies of the lives of the Lake Eyre Aborigines comes a picture of a kind of golden age for desert people. Wandering over their tribal territory each family party would search for food, sampling a wide variety. Over a year their intimate knowledge of each habitat enabled them to time their arrival when seeds and other plants were ready for harvesting. Windfalls would be appreciated and permanent waterholes yielded fish, yabbies and freshwater mussels.
The men had the task of catching the larger animals including kangaroos although they did not spurn smaller fry such as lizards and snakes. The women and children gathered a wide variety of small animals. It is significant that the Dieri people had names for sixteen mammals, all of which they ate. Bearded dragon lizards and goannas were also popular."

From: Vincent Serventy, The Desert Sea: The Miracle of Lake Eyre in Flood (1985)

The tribal name has been given to the prehistoric lake that once covered part of what came to be their territory.