Well, I am no sociologist, nor am I overly committed to the story as a purely factual account of the times ... and admittedly the extract I presented was one of the more shocking episodes that could be concisely cut and pasted. There were probably five or six such episodes in the novel detailing cannibalism, but you are right that the majority were part of burial rites where the family members ingested part of the body, or were a show of distain for a fallen enemy, so not really eaten for sustenance per se.
He describes his own good fortune in surviving - and not forgetting the story itself is one synonymous with 'good luck' in the Aussie vernacular - so the outcome for Buckley was very rare we can surmise (make of that what you will). But he puts his survival down to them believing that he was a white 'reincarnation' (I guess) of a deceased tribal member. Also, it appears he was 198cms tall - a veritable giant - so I think the oddity factor could certainly have worked in his favor.
The novel predates Darwinism and doesn't contain much in the way of favorably romanticizing the adventure's hero, as we often see in late 19th and early 20th century fiction/literature (mostly set in Africa). So for me, in short, much of the story does kind of pass the pub test as a simple narrative concerning how brutal life must have been... I don't believe at all that Aboriginals lived in harmony with nature or with each other...
Perhaps if the author didn't always refer to the Aboriginals as 'savages' and instead used a term like 'natives' more often, it would be more palatable for some.. no pun intended
FYI, it only takes a couple of hours to read the book - the story itself ends around the 160 page mark.
GM
