It is fitting to start with the First People of Australia as our first card of the week. However, there is much debate as to whether they actually grew wheat. We know they made a bread like substance which was the origins of "damper", but this was made of seeds, nuts, roots and tubers. There is also evidence that they must have known something of farming as when they pulled up a root they would carve a piece off to eat and then replant the rest for it to grow again.
As for the first cultivated wheat that honour goes to the Middle East, around 10,000 years ago. These were actually wild grains, discovered and farmed, and they had very hard husks. The first which really adapted well to cultivation were Einkorn and Emmer, and they are not only still grown today but they are coming back into favour as we try to live more sustainably. They are also often used in sourdough.
Aborigines had been featured before on Sanitarium cards, starting in 1950 with a set called "Aboriginal Tribes and Customs" (1950) in which card four shows a corroboree like ours. That set had a soft cover album, the back of which showed Australia split into tribes, in a hundred and eighty-seven areas, into which many tribes often fitted - in area one, which is right at the top of the Cape York Peninsula, in modern day Queensland, there were eighteen different tribes. They did get together quite frequently, usually at the sort of event shown on this card, where they would display their customs, some of which would then get adopted by other tribes.
This set is listed in our original Australia and New Zealand Index, RB.30, published in 1983 under section two of the Sanitarium Issues, which are those issued in Australia rather than New Zealand. And, by the way, the word "Weet-Bix" was first added to the title of the sets in 1967 with "Weet-Bix Alice in Wonderland".
In 1969, the year our set was issued, so were two others, "Australia Leaps Ahead" and "Traditional Uniforms of The World". All measure the same as our set and are of twenty cards.
Our set is catalogued as :
1969-3. Weet-Bix "The World of the Aborigine". 69 x 50. Nd. (20). Dated 1969. ...SA2-143