The Biggest Estate on Earth

by Bill Gammage

  Cook’s journal confirms Parkinson’s accuracy. On 19 June he climbed Grassy Hill, got clear views along the coast, and saw other grassy hills. He called them ‘barren and stoney’: some are stony but none are barren—trees block his views now. On 19 July he wrote, ‘I had an extensive view of the inland country which consisted of hills and vallies and large plains agreeably diversified with woods and lawns’,20 and later he recalled how diligently people made them:

  I have observed that when they went from our tents upon the banks of the Endeavour river, we could trace them by the fire which they kindled in their way; and we imagined that these fires were intended in some way for the taking of the kanguroo . . .

  They produce fire with great facility, and spread it in a wonderful manner . . . from the smallest spark they increase it with great speed and dexterity. We have often seen one of them run along the shore, to all appearance with nothing in his hand, who stooping down for a moment, at a distance of every fifty or a hundred yards, left fire behind him, as we could see first by the smoke, and then by the flame . . . We had the curiosity to examine one of these planters of fire, when he set off, and we saw him wrap up a small spark in dry grass, which, when he had run a little way, having been fanned by the air that his motion produced, began to blaze; he then laid it down in a place convenient for his purpose, inclosing a spark of it in another quantity of grass, and so continued his course.21

  Most places now named ‘Grassy’ or ‘Bald’ are not, and bush covers old grassland and –middens.22 The well-timed burns which for so long kept 3000 kilometres of coast ‘agreeably diversified with woods and lawns’ are no more.

  14. John William Lewin (1770–1819), The second

  Cataract on the North Esk near Launceston, 1809

  15. The second cataract, Launceston, Tasmania, 13 March 2008

  14: PXD 388/6, Mitchell Library, SLNS W. 15: BG. Compare pictures 13, 16–22, 39, 42, 46–7, 50, 57–8.

  14

  15

  Painted three years after William Paterson settled Launceston in March 1806, nothing on the North Esk fits the scene shown in picture 14: it is on the South Esk. It is sometimes ascribed to the first cataract from Kings Bridge. That crest does match Lewin better than this, which is less curved than he depicts, but nothing else fits. The line of the river, the small bays at left, the waterline hummock and the conical hill and some rock cracks on it at right, and the mid-stream and gorge-side rocks all match the second cataract seen across First Basin past Alexandra Suspension Bridge. Lewin’s foreground rocks were removed to make a recreation area, so picture 15 is from further back than picture 14.

  The view can be compared with Lewin’s The Cataract near Launceston Port Dalrymple, also 1809. That crest too is askew, but the river and gorge-side rocks match the view from Kings Bridge. This makes sensible Lewin’s naming the next cataract upstream ‘the second Cataract’.

  Lewin shows trees sparse on the centre hill, denser but with grass patches on the hill at right, and densest on the gorge-side at left. Three distinct fire regimes made these differences. The centre hill seems too steep to gather plants and too open to trap game even uphill, but safe from killer fires. Possibly it was a wallaby sanctuary (ch 10), whereas at right the tree-ringed grass patch on the waterline may be a wallaby trap. At left the steep, rocky face was burnt less often, and carries Drooping Sheoak, good for spears, sapwood to make a gargle for toothache, and trunks soaked in water to breed grubs. Behind them, Lewin has painted smoke, and people camping.

  William Collins wrote of the gorge, ‘The beauty of the scene is probably not surpass’d in this world . . . every part of it abounds with Swans, Ducks, and other kinds of Wildfowl.’23 This beauty and plenty depended on fire. All three hills were burnt, the left perhaps every ten years, the right about every 7–15, the centre about every three. Today’s denser trees signal much less burning. Unless Drooping Sheoak is burnt every 7–10 years it crowds out other species, and on all three hills it is now much denser. At left the biggest Sheoaks have gone, but the tendency Lewin shows for the right hill to carry Sheoak on its gorge side and gums on its outer slope is more pronounced.

  Here and elsewhere, there was more grass in 1809 than now. The Cataract near Launceston Port Dalrymple shows grassy hills with no or few trees. Today dense Sheoak, eucalypts, wattle, scrub and endangered South Esk Pine grow there, but almost no grass. People burnt this part more often than at the second cataract. Fire regimes were local.

  16. John Glover (1767–1849), Mills’ Plains, Ben Lomond, Ben

  Loder and Ben Nevis in the distance, Tasmania, c1832–4

  Pic AG3, TMAG. Compare pictures 1–4, 6, 13–15, 17, 20.

  16

  The view is east from the hill shown in Glover’s My Harvest Home (1835) above his farm near Deddington, northeast Tasmania. Glover’s accuracy has been questioned, but contemporaries thought him too accurate: one said his trees had a ‘hideous fidelity to Nature’.24 He has enlarged Ben Lomond, compressed the country horizontally, and replaced the cattle and white stockmen in his sketches with Tasmanians,25 but the view matches the site.

  The curved branches cause debate on what trees Glover depicted,26 but he stated, ‘the taller Trees are Gums, the lesser Whattle’.27 Spreading White Gums dominate the foreground and dot the plains and hills. ‘There is a remarkable peculiarity in the Trees in this Country’, Glover wrote, ‘however numerous, they rarely prevent your tracing through them the whole distant Country.’ He added that this view ‘gives a good idea of the thickly [sic] wooded part of the Country; it is possible almost every where, to drive a Carriage as easily as in a Gentleman’s Park in England’.28 Edward Lord did this, declaring on oath in 1812, ‘the forest land . . . is very open . . . from Hobart’s Town to Launceston, a loaded cart was drawn without the necessity of felling a tree . . . In general a very rich pasturage; it is a fine, beautiful picturesque country as can be.’29 This country carries the same trees now: sheoak, Blackwood and White Gum, including giants with coolamon (wooden dish) scars. In grazing country naturally the trees are spaced, but are still too dense to photograph the view Glover had.

  Glover shows Tasmanians. They were not there in 1832, for in 1828–30 they were shot or rounded up by bounty hunters like Glover’s neighbour John Batman.30 Glover knew this. He captioned his Batman’s Lookout, Benn Lomond (1835) ‘on account of Mr Batman frequenting this spot to entrap the Natives’.31 Yet he depicts not only their presence, but their absence. His Mills’ Plains foreground shows young gums, wattles and casuarinas, which all regenerate quickly after fire. They are young because Tasmanians burnt the old; they are there because Tasmanian burning was stopped. They are the first generation for decades not to get burnt, so their height measures the end of Tasmanian dominion.

  17. John Michael Skipper (1815–83), Onkaparinga,

  South Australia, 1838

  Morgan Thomas Bequest Fund 1942, AGSA .

  Compare pictures 16, 18–20, 25, 37, 39, 42, 49–50, 57.

  17

  The view is south of Adelaide a year or so after settlement, looking west across the Onka-paringa to the low coast dunes south of Port Noarlunga South. This area is mostly farms or houses now, but in reserves trees grow quite densely.

  Skipper depicts no undergrowth, and trees in clumps, implying fire about every three years to make grass. Foreground hills are burnt, but forest fringes distant dunes. It was dominated by Mallee Box and Drooping Sheoak.32 William Light’s nearby View at Yanka-lillah (1836) shows similar sheoak and scrub, very open. Such places were good camping: sheltered, cool in summer, handy to sea and plain. They were burnt less often: Drooping Sheoak needs at least seven fire-free years to seed. So at least two fire regimes, and possibly others for the swamp and the hills, made this land.

  Much of the coastal plain was similarly open—‘extensive treeless downs, contrasting strikingly in appearance from the woody country around’.33 At Aldinga it was ‘of the richest character . . . covered with so long and thick an herba
ge that it is quite laborious to walk through it . . . the scenery resembles an English gentleman’s park’.34 Other parts were open forest. ‘The scenery about Willunga is the prettiest I have seen in Australia,’ Edward Snell wrote. ‘There is a fine back ground of hills which at the base slope gently off to the sea, the whole covered with trees through which the roads wind and looking very much like a gentleman’s park in England on a very large scale.’35 George Angas painted a view west to the sea over the Carrickalinga ‘river’, showing ‘the singular manner in which the trees are dotted about in all directions’.36 His Entrance to the gorge of Yankalilla (1850) shows many trees small enough to be post-settlement, but foreground eucalypts and sheoak big and few, while hills are almost bare, as at Rapid Bay further south.37

  Together these pictures show varied tree spacing, but country always more open than is natural. To make such variety, fire regimes could not be haphazard. Each was distinct, repeated, and integrated with neighbours to maintain a range of plant and animal habitats.

  18. Martha Berkeley (1813–99), Mount Lofty

  from The Terrace, Adelaide, c1840

  South Australian Government Grant 1935, AGSA . Compare

  pictures 17, 19–20, 42–3, 50, 56–8.

  The view (overleaf) is from East Terrace southeast to Mt Lofty. Berkeley has embellished her foreground with people, a dog, a cart and a pair of blue wrens. The big gum branches narrowly, perhaps to frame the ground. A natural foreground would be dense Grey Box–SA Blue Gum forest,38 but there is only a dead tree, no stumps, and no undergrowth. To burn land clear of gums like this would take their lifetimes, say 300–500 years.

  The middle ground is grassland rapidly being colonised by post-settlement saplings. Beyond them forest sits on the plain and lowest slopes—a few magnificent gums survive there today. Most hill faces are grassy to their crests, where they give way sharply to forest or tree lines. In 1839 Theodore Scott noticed these ‘gently undulating hills crowned with trees’.39 At right tree lines run down grass hills and zigzag across the plain. Mt Lofty Range has grassy slopes below forest.

  18

  Berkeley could hardly have invented plant patterns so different, and James Backhouse confirmed them:

  After crossing the grassy plains of Adelaide, the first hills . . . are grassy, with a few trees, and a variety of plants. The next hills . . . have trees scattered upon them . . . The next hills are . . . abounding in gay vegetable productions, in forest . . . Some of the hills, like the plains below, are covered with . . . fine Kangaroo-grass, that is green, notwithstanding the temperature has, several times lately, risen to 107 in the shade.40

  Others painted these patterns. JA Thomas’ View on the Glenelg plains, near the hills (1837?) shows a grassy, bush (sheoak?)-studded plain meeting dense eucalypt forest at a sharp boundary. The forest rises to tree–grass mosaic hills, some on fire, below a forested Mt Lofty Range. Skipper’s Mount Lofty, Adelaide (1838) shows the tree-scattered hills approaching it which Backhouse described. Other paintings depict grassy hills with many fewer trees than today.41 By 1850 at least some were covered ‘with young gum trees’.42

  These patterns went deep into the hills. Dirk Hahn wrote,

  My first glance fell on the beautifully-formed trees, which nature had planted there as if with the hands of a gardener. Every tree stood about 40 feet apart from the others. Some were perhaps an acre apart, so that the land could be cultivated without uprooting a single tree . . . In those spots that seemed to me the most fertile, I found grass 3 feet 4 inches high: they looked like our European cornfields . . . The Onkaparinga, a name borrowed from the savages, also crosses this valley . . . On its surface many fish . . . sported around and certainly had never before been exposed to the fisherman’s pursuit.43

  Sturt remembered the Onkaparinga hills as ‘grassy, and clear of trees . . . On the other side of Mount Terrible the country is very scrubby for some miles, until, all at once, you burst upon the narrow, but beautiful valley of Mypunga [sic] . . . covered with Orchideous plants of every colour, amidst a profusion of the richest vegetation.’44 Many orchids signify recent fire. Jane Franklin wrote that the land between Mt Lofty and Encounter Bay ‘was exceedingly pretty; in some parts not unlike an English park, grassy and lightly timbered, and quite free from scrub and underwood’, and Sturt remarked that it was ‘so open that the labour of felling and clearing is wholly unnecessary’.45

  Pictures 17–18 illustrate distinct fire regimes, in different seasons, with different timings (ch 6). To burn patterns so complex in terrain so varied needs intricate knowledge of plants and fire, visionary planning, and skill and patience greater than anything modern Australia has imagined.

  19. Robert Hoddle (1794–1881), Ginninginderry Plains, NSW, c1832

  vn3423118, NLA. Compare pictures 16–18, 20, 23–7, 36, 50–1, 57.

  Ginninderra Creek runs through Canberra’s northwest suburbs. In 1832–5 Hoddle surveyed much of the Canberra district, especially along watercourses (ch 9). About here, along what he called ‘Ginninginninderry Chain of Ponds’, he plotted ‘open plain’ and ‘open forest’, marking their boundary with dotted lines.46 His foreground is framed with trees perhaps too slender to have grown in the open, but the scene matches his field books. The plains have few trees, and as at Cooktown (picture 13) some are in narrow lines, perhaps wildlife corridors. Except at left and possibly on north facing slopes, hills and ranges are grassy. Hoddle described the ranges west of the Murrumbidgee from Mt Tennant north as ‘grassy hills open forest’.47 Despite or because of several devastating bushfires, they are dense forest today.

  Hoddle painted other district scenes showing open plains with tree lines or clumps in front of sparsely timbered hills.48 This template was common (ch 7). Near Peak Hill on the Bogan (NSW) on 15 August 1817, Oxley might have been describing this scene:

  from thirty to forty miles round, the country was broken in irregular low hills thinly studded with small timber, and covered with grass: the whole landscape within the compass of our view was clear and open, resembling diversified pleasure grounds irregularly laid out and planted . . . although the soil and character of the country rendered it fit for all agricultural purposes, yet I think from its general clearness from brush, or underwood of any kind, that such tracts must be peculiarly adapted for sheep-grazing.49

  19

  20. Robert Hoddle (1794–1881), View from Melbourne, 1847?

  PX*D 319, Mitchell Library, SLNS W. Compare pictures 17–19, 25, 27, 36, 50–1, 57.

  Hoddle painted views from Batman’s Hill in Melbourne, but casuarinas topped it, so this hill is not it. The mountain looks like Mt Macedon from an angle similar to Hoddle’s sketches of it from the west side of Port Phillip.50 I guess that the view is towards Mt Macedon from roughly southeast.

  Foreground stumps declare slight European clearing, perhaps by Hoddle’s survey gang, but Aborigines made this country. It prompted Hoddle to describe Melbourne as

  prettily situated upon gently undulating hills . . . picturesque and park-like country, which the most fastidious observer of Nature’s beauties cannot be insensible to. The soil in the immediate neighbourhood of the town is most excellent, which, with the park-like appearance of the surrounding country, forms a grand contrast to the barren scrub and sandy rocks of Sydney.51

  20

  Much land around Melbourne was similarly ‘park-like’ (ch 9). Hoddle’s View from Batman’s Hill Melbourne Port Phillip (1840) looks over the country between Station Peak (Flinders Peak) in the You Yangs about 50 kilometres west-southwest, and Mt Macedon about 65 kilometres northwest. Again a few foreground stumps suggest survey clearing, but the vast stretch beyond has no stumps and barely a tree, and those distant few are in lines. Franklin told her husband, ‘we drove a few miles out of town towards Mt Macedon on fine open grassy grounds of beautiful verdure in many places and very scantily wooded’. She noted ‘fine park-like pasturages, quite green, or more or less so . . . the greenness of the country proceeds from
its having been recently burnt & some heavy rains falling since’.52 This land may have been sheet-burnt regularly to expose Yam Daisy, which grew in millions here (ch 10). Perhaps the yellow streaks in Hoddle’s painting depict them.

  Von Guerard’s View from the Bald Hills between Ballarat and Creswick Creek (1858) shows similar grass (‘bald’) hills, trees regenerating because 1788 fire has ceased, and open forest plains.

  21. Eugen von Guerard (1811–1901), Crater of Mt Eccles, 1858

  22. The crater of Mt Eccles, Victoria, 18 March 2007

  21: PIC S1011, NLA [from von Guerard]. 22: BG. Compare pictures 13–15, 20, 31, 38, 56.

  Von Guerard’s scene is instantly recognisable. Scrub now blocks his shore and slope, but the plateau at left is the picnic ground, and the rocks by the horsemen a photo point. The rim forest at right rear has thinned; most forest has thickened. It was thickening in 1858: most trees in the painting are small and grow straight to compete for light, signalling recent capture of grassland. The biggest trees then, Ribbon Gum at left, are the biggest still, but clear of competitors branch widely now.

  21

  22

  Von Guerard shows tree lines on crests, and in and above the crater tree belts and grass necks. No soil change dictates their boundaries, and grass then is trees now, mostly Ribbon Gum, Blackwood, Native Cherry or pine, each controlled with different fire. Belts confined and located koalas, now re-introduced here, mosaics put feed near shelter for grass eaters, steep sides advantaged hunters. These are templates (ch 8). Burn the grass in patches for pick, and they become traps. Beyond this scene, the crater’s outer slopes hint of former tree belts, suggesting that the inner and outer slopes were similarly patterned.

  PICTURES 23–30: ARID-ZONE FIRE

  23. Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), Ayers Rock northwest