(Or at least relatively brief considering we're going to be spanning a period of 65,000 years. I am no particular expect on this - it's simply a collation of information I have found online and some assumptions based around it, so anyone who knows more please weigh in and share anything else.)
Having been playing around with slates recently I've also been looking into the history of sharpening stones here, and seeing as there are quite a few Aussie members on the forums I thought it might also be of interest to someone other than myself.
In 2017 a fairly significant discovery was made on a site belonging to the Mirrar people in Kakadu national park, which pushed what we know of the history of people in Australia and the date of the first migration back considerably, to at least 65,000 years ago. Among the findings were a number of perfectly preserved stone axes, and a sharpening stone. No other cultures anywhere are known to have used sharpened axes such as these for at least the next 20,000 years, this is the world's first known whetstone: Aboriginal archaeological discovery in Kakadu rewrites the history of Australia
As well as this type of stone, which seems to have been used specifically for sharpening, there are also two-part stones. These have a number of uses for crushing and grinding in all manner of cooking and food preparation, as well as crushing rocks to create pigments, and sharpening. Kind of like a mortar and pestle / whetsone hybrid. They might normally be made from sandstones, but other stones are used too, including basalt and quartzite : Grindstones
Axes would also have been ground and sharpened on sandstone outcrops, resulting in permanent grinding grooves: Fact sheet: Aboriginal axe-grinding grooves | Aboriginal Victoria
We can probably conclude that most, if not all, Aboriginal peoples have been using whetstones for many tens of thousands of years.
Now let's skip forward to European settlement / invasion (another episode of British imperial history that didn't cover itself in glory, to say the least)... If you were a British, Irish, or other European person arriving in a land as alien as Australia at the beginning of the 19th century it's probably fair to say that a knife and an axe were a couple of important things to remember to pack. But I've found very little information about what would have been used to keep them sharp. Europeans did learn from Aboriginal peoples concerning the land, so I imagine similar methods to the above would have been employed, as well as stones from elsewhere. Particularly popular were 'Turkey Stones' from Crete or Turkey, as well as Washitas, and almost certainly stones from Britain too.
It is not until later in the c.19th that we really find evidence of Australian whetstones, or shearstones, being quarried and used by Europeans. And not until 1890 that we see the first major commercial operation at Mudgee in NSW after the discovery of a sizeable amount of slate the previous year: Mudgee Shearstone Opening Ceremony, The Shearer's Record
But as per the following article it is not known when operations ceased there: Early history of shearstone sharpening deposits
As of today there seem to be vanishingly few people making whetstones in Australia. Indeed when I went to the Willunga slate museum it had a display of all the various possible uses for slate, but not including whetstones, and the person who showed us around seemed surprised when I asked him about it. I know of someone in NSW making them from shale or mudstone, a couple of people in Tasmania from sandstone for scythes, and I imagine traditional Aboriginal stones are still used in some form in certain places.
That's my potted history of whetstones in Australia, please feel free to add to it with any more information if anyone has any!
Having been playing around with slates recently I've also been looking into the history of sharpening stones here, and seeing as there are quite a few Aussie members on the forums I thought it might also be of interest to someone other than myself.
In 2017 a fairly significant discovery was made on a site belonging to the Mirrar people in Kakadu national park, which pushed what we know of the history of people in Australia and the date of the first migration back considerably, to at least 65,000 years ago. Among the findings were a number of perfectly preserved stone axes, and a sharpening stone. No other cultures anywhere are known to have used sharpened axes such as these for at least the next 20,000 years, this is the world's first known whetstone: Aboriginal archaeological discovery in Kakadu rewrites the history of Australia
As well as this type of stone, which seems to have been used specifically for sharpening, there are also two-part stones. These have a number of uses for crushing and grinding in all manner of cooking and food preparation, as well as crushing rocks to create pigments, and sharpening. Kind of like a mortar and pestle / whetsone hybrid. They might normally be made from sandstones, but other stones are used too, including basalt and quartzite : Grindstones
Axes would also have been ground and sharpened on sandstone outcrops, resulting in permanent grinding grooves: Fact sheet: Aboriginal axe-grinding grooves | Aboriginal Victoria
We can probably conclude that most, if not all, Aboriginal peoples have been using whetstones for many tens of thousands of years.
Now let's skip forward to European settlement / invasion (another episode of British imperial history that didn't cover itself in glory, to say the least)... If you were a British, Irish, or other European person arriving in a land as alien as Australia at the beginning of the 19th century it's probably fair to say that a knife and an axe were a couple of important things to remember to pack. But I've found very little information about what would have been used to keep them sharp. Europeans did learn from Aboriginal peoples concerning the land, so I imagine similar methods to the above would have been employed, as well as stones from elsewhere. Particularly popular were 'Turkey Stones' from Crete or Turkey, as well as Washitas, and almost certainly stones from Britain too.
It is not until later in the c.19th that we really find evidence of Australian whetstones, or shearstones, being quarried and used by Europeans. And not until 1890 that we see the first major commercial operation at Mudgee in NSW after the discovery of a sizeable amount of slate the previous year: Mudgee Shearstone Opening Ceremony, The Shearer's Record
But as per the following article it is not known when operations ceased there: Early history of shearstone sharpening deposits
As of today there seem to be vanishingly few people making whetstones in Australia. Indeed when I went to the Willunga slate museum it had a display of all the various possible uses for slate, but not including whetstones, and the person who showed us around seemed surprised when I asked him about it. I know of someone in NSW making them from shale or mudstone, a couple of people in Tasmania from sandstone for scythes, and I imagine traditional Aboriginal stones are still used in some form in certain places.
That's my potted history of whetstones in Australia, please feel free to add to it with any more information if anyone has any!
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