The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia
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Overview
Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park, with extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands, and abundant wildlife. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than most people have ever realized. For more than a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and this book reveals how. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires Australians now experience. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, this book rewrites the history of the continent, with huge implications for today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781742693521 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 725,536 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Biggest Estate on Earth
How Aborigines Made Australia
By Bill Gammage
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2011 Bill GammageAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74269-352-1
CHAPTER 1
Curious landscapes
In 1770 Lieutenant James Cook, HMS Endeavour, saw something remarkable along Australia's east coast: the trees had 'no under wood'. On 1 May he 'made an excursion into the country which we found diversified with woods, lawns and marshes; the woods are free from underwood of every kind and the trees are at such a distance from one another that the whole country or at least a great part of it might be cultivated without being obliged to cut down a single tree'. The land equally surprised Joseph Banks, gentleman on board. 'The country tho in general well enough clothed', he wrote, 'appeared in some places bare. It resembled in my imagination the back of a lean Cow, covered in general with long hair, but nevertheless where her scraggy hip bones have stuck out further than they ought accidental rubs and knocks have entirely bared them of their share of covering.' Hilltops, Banks was saying, were bare. Trees were on lower slopes, but 'were not very large and stood separate from each other without the least under wood'. Sydney Parkinson, Banks' draughtsman, echoed his employer: 'The country looked very pleasant and fertile; and the trees, quite free from under-wood, appeared like plantations in a gentleman's park.'
In the Whitsundays further north, Cook saw 'land on both the Main and the Islands ... diversified with woods and Lawns that looked green and pleasant'. There a century later naval commander GS Nares named Grassy Island, because it was grass-covered with a few trees on its summit. About half the island is tree-covered now. Nares saw other grassy Whitsunday islands, but except where cleared all are wooded today.
On 23 August Cook summed up the east coast. It was 'cloathed with woods, long grass, shrubs, plants &ca. The mountains or hills are chequered with woods and lawns. Some of the hills are wholly covered with flourishing trees; others but thinly, and the few that are on them are small and the spots of lawns or Savannahs are rocky and barren.' This was no shipside impression. Among other landings, Cook spent seven weeks at Cooktown (picture 13).
These remarks are curious. Untended east coast bush today has much under-wood and no bare hills, let alone woods chequered with lawns. Yet in the years to come Cook's words were repeated again and again, and Europeans fresh-seeing the land made Parkinson's comparison with a gentleman's park more often than any other.
Across Australia newcomers saw grass where trees are now, and open forest free of undergrowth now dense scrub. South of Hobart, Abel Tasman saw land 'pretty generally covered with trees, standing so far apart that they allow a passage everywhere ... unhindered by dense shrubbery or underwood'. This is dense forest now: why not then? Of course in 1788 there were thick scrubs, impenetrable eucalypts, rainforest walls, but this sharpens the puzzle, for often they gave way abruptly to grass. In 1824 William Hovell reported moving suddenly from grass into tangles of undergrowth and fallen timber piled higher than his horses, almost impossible to walk through, let alone ride. Tasmanian Buttongrass, common in boggy country, also occurs where rainforest should be. How did it get there? Not how does it stay there now, but how did it get there in the first place, despite no change in soil, aspect or elevation from adjacent rainforest? White Grass likes open country, yet can be found under trees. For this to happen, once open country became treed. How? In 1788 Australia had more grass, more open forest, less undergrowth and less rainforest than made sense to Europeans. It was another country.
There is a tandem puzzle. Typically, grass grew on good soil and trees on poor (ch 7). In 1826 Robert Dawson described country behind Port Stephens (NSW) as
in general heavily timbered, and as usual, without underwood. After crossing a deep, and in some places a dry channel, which in rainy seasons would be called a river, the soil began to improve. The country gradually became less heavily timbered, and the views more extensive. This was in accordance with what I had been previously led to expect, and fully confirmed by my former observations, that the poorest soils contained more than treble the number of trees that are found in the best soil, being also much longer and taller. This, like most other things in this strange country, is, I believe, nearly the reverse of what we find in England.
In South Australia Edward John Eyre, a most competent observer, wrote, 'For the most part we passed through green valleys with rich soil and luxuriant pasturage. The hills adjoining the valley were grassy, and lightly wooded on the slopes facing the valley; towards the summits they became scrubby, and beyond, the scrub almost invariably made its appearance', and Charles Sturt observed,
As regards the general appearance of the wooded portion of this province, I would remark, that excepting on the tops of the ranges where the stringy-bark grows; in the pine forests, and where there are belts of scrub on barren or sandy ground, its character is that of open forest without the slightest undergrowth save grass ... In many places the trees are so sparingly, and I had almost said judiciously distributed as to resemble the park lands attached to a gentleman's residence in England.
Near Gundagai (NSW) in the 1840s two tourists found 'beautiful meadowland ... bounded by sloping ranges of hills covered with grass, and thinly timbered. Generally speaking, all fertile lands in Australia appear to be characterized by these beautiful features.' Generally speaking that was so in the 1840s, but not now. Why did the most fertile land grow the fewest trees?
A few travellers puzzled at this. In 1831 William Govett saw summits behind Sydney 'clothed with grass, which circumstance, considering the barrenness and excessive sterility which pervades all the connecting ridges, and that region of the mountains, is certainly very extraordinary ... In general ... the ranges are covered with short timber and scrub.' 'The great peculiarity here', RJ Sholl wrote northeast of Broome (WA), 'as well as in the land to the north of the Glenelg, is the total absence of undergrowth bushes; between the widely separated thin and short trees there is nothing but grass and creepers. Let it be thin or thick, good or bad, tall or short, still it is grass.' At Omeo (Vic) about 1843 Henry Haygarth portrayed his perplexity vividly:
The gloomy forest had opened, and about two miles before, or rather beneath us — for the ground, thinly dotted with trees, sloped gently downwards — lay a plain about seven miles in breadth. Its centre was occupied by a lagoon ... On either side of this the plain, for some distance, was as level as a bowling-green, until it was met by the forest, which shelved picturesquely down towards it, gradually decreasing in its vast masses until they ended in a single tree. In the vicinity of the forest the ground was varied by gentle undulations, which, as they intersected each other, formed innumerable grassy creeks and open flats, occasionally adorned with native honeysuckles and acacias ... Two remarkable conical hills, perfectly free from timber, rose in the middle of the largest plain ... The whole, as far as the eye could reach, was clothed with a thick coat of grass, rich and luxuriant, as if the drought, so destructive elsewhere, had never reached this favoured spot.
It was Omio [sic] plain. By what accident, or rather by what freak of nature, came it there? A mighty belt of forest, for the most part destitute of verdure, and forming as uninviting a region as could well be found, closed it on every side for fifty miles; but there, isolated in the midst of a wilderness of desolation, lay this beautiful place, so fair, so smiling.
Omeo's historian wrote,
When the first white men came to the Omeo Plains all the best country was treeless. On the lower foothills which bordered the plains, there were large gum trees, standing singly, and odd clumps of sally wood ... northward and almost to the tablelands, about six miles away, the gum timber was dense, and known as The Forest,
and Thomas Walker thought the valley 'the prettiest piece of country I have seen since leaving the Murrimbidgee [sic], very thinly timbered, indeed in many parts clear, with here and there interspersed a few trees or a clump or a belt, the soil sound and good ... the sward close ... the whole being intersected by lagoons: it is quite like a gentleman's park in England'.
Other Gippsland travellers saw chains of plains, and in 1834 John Lhotsky confessed of similar chains between Gundaroo and Michelago (NSW):
It is ... a most remarkable, but not very easily explicable fact, that they are altogether destitute of trees of any kind, and only on the secondary hills or banks, which divide their plications, are some gum-trees thinly scattered, whereas large timber covers the main ranges ... it is difficult to understand, how it is, that there is not even a vestige of incipient sylvification in the plains and downs themselves.
Charles von Hugel, a botanist, stated, 'A plain like the Goulburn Plain is certainly an interesting phenomenon ... as in the case of all the plains mentioned earlier, the soil is good — why is it that no trees occur on it, seeing that they grow splendidly when planted? There is no easy answer to this question.' In the same district Govett observed in 1832,
The park-like forests of this County are relieved in many parts by plains, or portions of ground altogether destitute of timber. These plains vary in extent and form, some are hilly and undulating, while others appear a mere flat, and the generality of them possess a good soil. It appears as if the seed of the tree has never been, as it were, scattered upon them, for it cannot be disputed, that the trees which surround these plains would also vegetate upon them.
A century later TM Perry investigated these plains. He could find no soil distinctive to them or to the woodland around. Each could be 'on identical soils'. He could not say why. This was land where trees grow now.
Soil can regulate which plants grow where, yet Sturt saw trees vanish without any soil change, and puzzled at 'the sudden manner in which several species are lost at one point, to re-appear at another more distant, without any visible cause for the break'. In the Dorrigo (NSW) brush in 1894 Joseph Maiden reported 'plains which simply consist of grass-land, entirely destitute of trees, or dotted about as in a gentleman's park. Usually the edge of the scrub and of the plain are as sharply defined as it is possible for them to be, as though a Brobdingnagian with mighty sickle, had there finished his reaping.' G Marks investigated in 1911, and found 'open flats that never grew timber in their virgin state, yet they have similar soils to the timber areas that surrounded them, and apparently are identical in their chemical composition and mechanical nature'. By then Leichhardt had discounted soils. At Calvert's Plains on the Dawson (Qld) he noted,
It was interesting to observe how strictly the scrub kept to the sandstone and to the stiff loam lying upon it, whilst the mild black whinstone [basalt] soil was without trees, but covered with luxuriant herbs and grasses; and this fact struck me as remarkable, because, during my travels in the Bunya country of Moreton Bay, I found it to be exactly the reverse: the sandstone spurs of the range being there covered with an open well grassed forest, whilst a dense vine brush extended over the basaltic rock.
A month later he added, 'It is remarkable that that part of the range which is composed of basalt, is a fine open forest, whereas the basaltic hills of the large valley are covered with a dense scrub.' That stumped him.
In the South Australian mallee in 1839, stumps bewildered Eyre:
In some parts of the large plains we had crossed in the morning, I had observed traces of the remains of timber, of a larger growth than any now found in the same vicinity, and even in places where none at present exists. Can these plains of such very great extent, and now so open and exposed, have been once clothed with timber? and if so, by what cause, or process, have they been so completely denuded, as not to leave a single tree within a range of many miles? In my various wanderings in Australia, I have frequently met with very similar appearances; and somewhat analogous to these, are the singular little grassy openings, or plains, which are constantly met with in the midst of the densest Eucalyptus scrub ... Forcing his way through dense, and apparently interminable scrub ... the traveller suddenly emerges into an open plain, sprinkled over with a fine silky grass, varying from a few acres to many thousands in extent, but surrounded on all sides by the dreary scrub he has left. In these plains I have constantly traced the remains of decayed scrub — generally of a larger growth than that surrounding them — and occasionally appearing to have grown very densely together ... The plains found interspersed among the dense scrubs may probably have been occasioned by fires, purposely or accidentally lighted by the natives in their wanderings, but I do not think the same explanation would apply to those richer plains where the timber has been of a large growth and the trees in all probability at some distance apart — here fires might burn down a few trees, but would not totally annihilate them over a whole district, extending for many miles in every direction.
Attempts today to explain these puzzles can be unsatisfying. Researchers write of soil boundaries, cracking clay, rain shadows, nutrient supply, frost and aspect. No doubt each applies somewhere, but none where trees grow now but not then. Other explanations — bushfire, salination, overgrazing — may sometimes be cogent, but rarely for sources so soon after newcomers came.
Even particular trees might be curiously placed. Surprisingly often early Europeans crossed rivers and creeks via 'fallen' trees. Records mention twelve in Tasmania, at least seven in Western Australia, four in Victoria, three in New South Wales and one in Queensland, including over rivers like the Murray, Lachlan, Goulburn, Gordon and Tasmania's Emu, 'the widest and deepest river we had seen since leaving Circular Head'. It is hard to imagine a tree spanning those rivers now, or even a decent creek, yet in southwest Australia JC Bussell crossed several in one journey. Mary Gilmore said Aborigines dropped trees deliberately, by undermining their roots: she saw it done to cross Wollundry Lagoon at Wagga (NSW).
People may also have made straight tree lanes. Some led to initiation grounds. A ground near Mildura (Vic) was approached by a straight line of at least eight marked gums; another on the Macquarie by a 'long straight avenue of trees, extended for about a mile, and these were carved on each side, with various devices'. On the Murray in 1844, a 'natural avenue of gum-trees extends ... two rows of noble trees growing at almost equal distances; the open grassy space between each row being at least 100 feet in width: so regular are the intervals between them, that it is almost difficult, at first sight, to persuade one's self that they were not planted by the hand of man'. In Tasmania Henry Hellyer 'ascended the most magnificent grass hill I have seen in this country, consisting of several level terraces, as if laid out by art, and crowned with a straight row of stately peppermint trees, beyond which there was not a tree for four miles along the grassy hills'.
Other curious plant stories have emerged since 1788: fire tolerant and fire sensitive plants side by side, plants needing one fire regime beside plants needing another, newcomers driving a carriage or painting a view through country where trees make this impossible now. Clear of settlement, there may be more trees today than in 1788.
Bill Jackson calculated that 47 per cent of Tasmania should have been rainforest in 1788, but wasn't. It was eucalypt forest, scrub, heath or grass, sometimes with burnt rainforest logs beneath. Jackson instanced sites where other plants had displaced rainforest thousands of years ago, and remained ever since. He noted that Tasmania had much less rainforest than New Zealand's south island, a comparable climate, and concluded that deliberate burning best explained the difference. 'The present distribution of floristic units in western Tasmania', Rhys Jones agreed, 'can be explained only in terms of both a high fire regime over a long period during the past, and the lifting of that pressure during the past hundred and fifty years.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage. Copyright © 2011 Bill Gammage. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations,Thanks,
Sources,
Abbreviations,
Definitions,
Foreword by Henry Reynolds,
Australia in 1788,
Introduction: The Australian estate,
1. Curious landscapes,
2. Canvas of a continent,
Why was Aboriginal land management possible?,
3. The nature of Australia,
4. Heaven on earth,
5. Country,
How was land managed?,
6. The closest ally,
7. Associations,
8. Templates,
9. A capital tour,
10. Farms without fences,
Invasion,
11. Becoming Australian,
Appendix 1: Science, history and landscape,
Appendix 2: Current botanical names for plants named with capitals in the text,
Notes,
Bibliography,