The Blogosphere in Aboriginal Australia

Although the aboriginal peoples of Australia evolved and maintained what modern anthropologeeks widely classify as a form of blogosphere over the space of some twenty thousand years, Europeans were at first slow to recognise the fact. This cultural insensitivity can be blamed, at least in part, on the state of the European blogosphere at the time of the continent's discovery. English blogs in particular had fallen considerably from the heights achieved in the Middle Ages; they were notoriously bloated and corrupt in their data, while commenting facilities were severely curtailed during the Falklands crisis thanks to the machinations of Lord Sandwich. Indeed, the vocation of bloggery was held in such disdain that the crew of Cook's ship HMS Endeavour included only one half-pay nerd, among whose other duties was the lowly one of greasing the larboard knot-holes for the release of dirty tackle.

The origins of the Australian blogosphere are lost in the motherboards of prehistory, and much of what was present at Cook's arrival has been eaten by cane toads; but sufficient indications remain to show that the aborigines possessed a highly sophisticated if sparsely updated resource, even though posting probably entailed little more than the rearrangement of a few stones or the smearing of ochre on a rock face. Trolling appears to have been almost unknown, except when the swelling of the billabongs facilitated a special festival for the purpose.

As to the content of the Australian blogosphere, we can only speculate. Undoubtedly hunting and gathering were major concerns, and it is likely that religious themes were also prevalent. After episodes of tribal warfare prisoners were occasionally displayed for the entertainment of kinspersons and the humiliation of rivals; those taken for this purpose were known as video captures. Attempts by the convicts of Botany Bay to adapt this custom to their own purposes naturally resulted in disaster, and arguably delayed the adoption of the digital camera by the aborigines for nearly two and a half centuries.

The blogosphere's effects on the continent's wildlife have still not been properly assessed, but it is now considered virtually certain that the co-operation and sense of common purpose which bloggery induces in as much as three per cent of modern practitioners enabled a vast improvement in hunting techniques. Controversy still rages over how far the aborigines were responsible for the extinction of species such as the giant bandicoot and the sabre-toothed wombat; but in the case of the Woollamagonga Megabudgie there is concrete evidence, in the form of some still readable rock paintings signifying a call which may be roughly translated as, "Who's a pretty boy then?"