Aboriginal trade, and subsequently all trade for that matter, was bourn of the desire to obtain natural resources and manufactured items from distant regions; hence, Aborigines established extensive networks of trade throughout Australia (some so vast that they eventually spanned the whole continent, and thus contributed to the maintenance of cultural continuity among the Aborigines) (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, sec. III, A, 3). In addition to the exchange of material goods, Aborigines also exchanged the cultures of their regions through songs, artistic motifs, and accounts of events bearing importance (sec. III, A, 3). Important also are the Aboriginal concepts of trade. An example of these is the link in vocabulary between groups of Aborigines that live far apart from each other; to elaborate, the Ualarai of northern New South Wales term the grass seeds they prepare for milling into flour [jarara], whereas another tribe (the Karawa) living almost 1500 kilometers to the north apply the same term to the special milling stones on which the same type of seeds are crushed (Hiatt 159). With the mention of regional vernacular, the idea of language as a social aspect is brought into play.

The manufacture of tools in played an integral role in traditional Aboriginal culture. Early Aborigines made large axes with ground edges that they bound to wooden handles via strips of hide; other stone tools were used to cut plants and animal carcasses and to scrape the hides of animals (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, sec. III, A, 2). Common small tools, often made from flint, consisted of knives with blunted backsides, chisel, gougers, and borers (sec. III, A, 2). Wooden tools consisted of spears, spear-throwers, boomerangs, clubs, shields, and sticks for digging (sec. III, A, 2). Aborigines utilized a plethora of natural resources for refinement into rather complex tools: fishing hooks from shell, animal fur and human hair to make rope and nets, bone needles used to stitch animal skins, and tree bark, reeds, and palm leaves to make baskets (sec. III, A, 2). All Aborigines made personal ornaments like armbands and necklaces from available resources like animal claws, coiled plant fibers, shell, and bone that served ceremonial purposes during dances and other acts which were meant to appeal to a tribe's totem; the totem was based on a plant or animal common among Aboriginal environments (sec. III, A,2). In these ways does Aboriginal economy overlap Aboriginal religious aspects.

With regard to obtaining food, the Aborigines were skillful pragmatic chemists in that few edible items were thrown away because of their poisonous characteristics, before treatment (Hiatt 160). For instance, Northern Aborigines learned to remove the poison from the seeds of cycad plants, and these seeds were subsequently ground into flour from which was made a type of bread (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, sec. III, A, 1). Aborigines enjoyed a mixed and oftentimes abundant diet of plant and animal foods that varied as a function of season and local environmental conditions (sec. III, A, 1). The earliest Aboriginal occupants were coastal dwellers and thus relied heavily on fish for food; this being the case, they built large and complex underwater stone-walled traps to increase their catches and utilized large nets composed of plant fibers to also aide in the predation of aquatic life (sec. III, A, 1). Not merely

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