Middens, centuries in the making

Centuries inthe making

You’ve probably seen them but never realised what they are. Middens. Incredible organic structures. Layers of Indigenous history grown from thousands of years of gathering along the Mornington Peninsula coastline. Along the back beaches in the dunes from Cape Schanck to Point Nepean there are middens that are 20,000 years old.

Kitchen/shell middens piled high, loaded with visible edible shell leftovers from gastropods and pipis. Remnants of tools and fire-making where Australia’s First Peoples came to cook, eat and socialise. Turbos with their trapdoors cooked in their shells.

“The whole of Port Phillip is one continuous midden with gaps in between,” says Dan Turnbull, from the Bunurong Land Council. “People came to the same spot to fish and eat over and over. What was left behind has become layers of our story. Stories about what our ancestors ate in certain places in certain time periods, what implements they used and their interactions. The further down you go, the thicker the layers of most middens become, and the bigger the shells too. The animals were able to grow much larger back then and there was more of them too, not overfished like today. Big abalone shells. Kids placing small shells inside big shells, sometimes eight at a time, stacked from the biggest to smallest. We’ve even seen a smiley face scratched on the surface of shells between six to eight thousand years ago.”

Fishing hooks, spiral shapes marked on shells and even human remains have been found in some middens. “Some people went back to these places – where they and generations before them sat to eat and tell stories – to pass,” Dan says. “Some were buried facing Country and some facing the sea. Thousands of generations of people returning.”

Stratigraphy is the branch of geology concerned with layering. History records that the middens along the Peninsula were 6m high at the time of white settlement, until settlers drove their carts pulled by bullocks and tore them apart in search of lime for cement. The mortar in between the bricks at Fort Nepean contains artefacts too, caught in the sand that the mortar was made from. Now protected, what remains of these incredible natural encyclopedias of Indigenous culture is to be preserved and treasured. There are even middens beneath the boatsheds on Mount Martha Beach.

Take a look sometime to view the amazing ancient culture that surrounds you. Take it in, but do so with care – and respect.

Written by Liz Rogers and previously published in Mornington Peninsula Magazine