G'day Moira,It's a long, long way from your NT down past ours to chase up dubious Conan Doyle 'bushrangers' from Ballarat (I take John Ruyg passed on the Aus-Worldfolk ponderings).
Maybe I'm just being taken in by cliche cartoon images, but I thought the Inuit would also get a lot of their diet from fish. In fact, I seem to remember a TV documentary on modern day life in the Arctic where an Inuit was shown catching so many salmon that he could not load them all into his sled and made up a makeshift sled load by freezing fish into solid sliding base and packing the rest on top!
I suppose salmon would be seasonal - especially when you are beyond anywhere to find wood to cook or smoke them.
I ate some North Atlantic salmon caught by friends in Tasmania (escaped from the new hatchery?) and they were just split and cooked in an old wood stove ... I see why some hold the wild salmon the finest fish in the world!
While in Tasmania, earlier this year, I looked upon some of Tasmania's relics of the Franklins - mostly of Lady Franklin who was far keener on arts, science and learning for women than her colonial contemporaries. There still stands a small sandstone 'museum' (meant in the older Greek senses of the word) just up the road from a friend's house in Lenah Valley.
BTW: Lenah Valley is an interesting piece of antipodean prudery. Lenah is a local Aboriginal for kangaroo and Valley the modern English to replace the original name of the area ... Kangaroo Bottom!
Regards,
Bob Bolton