Clothing

Anthropological and ethnographical studies of the use of clothing among Aboriginal people of south-eastern Australia indicate that garments for thermal protection were often not worn in the warmer months of the year. The increased use of Aboriginal clothing in the colder months of the year point to it being a behavioural adaptation to exposure to cold (Gilligan 2008). Colonial writers often remarked on Aboriginal people’s nudity or being scantily clad, which was really a Eurocentric social construct rather than an actual state of nakedness as Aboriginal people were known to make significant behavioural adaptations to cold weather in order to keep warm, including feathers, ochres and animal fat (Stephens 2014; Massola 1971; Smyth 1878). Dawson (1881) described some of the methods that Aboriginal people used to protect themselves from the cold that did not require ‘clothing’. "From abstract