Even before the arrival of the Australoids (alias the ‘Blackfellows’), several waves of migrants had already come to the World’s Southernmost Continent inhabitable by man. One such group was the Negritos, or Mimi people. Traces of their earlier occupancy of Mainland Australia can still be found in the Northern Territory, and near Cairns in Queensland.
Thereafter, various tribes of Australoids (today often called ‘Aboriginals’), arrived at different times from the north or from the northwest. They displaced not only one another, but also finally drove off the Mimi Negritos from the Mainland and into Tasmania — where the last full-bloods finally died out about a century and a half ago. Today, there are at least 4000 living mixed-blood descendants1 of the Black Tasmanian Negrito or Mimi people. Their ancestors were altogether quite distinct in culture, language and race2 from those of the present Black Australoids who displaced them.
