by Bill Gammage
aspect, June 1894
24. Kantju, Uluru, NT, 31 March 2005
23: Gillen Coll AA 108, album E-AP 5708, SA M [from Spencer
and Gillen 1912, fig 45]. 24: BG. Compare pictures 25–30.
I thank Punch Hall, who in one day drove me from
Alice Springs and back to take pictures 24, 26 and 28.
Spencer’s photo is not the first of Uluru. William Tietkins took several around Mutitjulu in July 1889. Most are unclear, but one shows country like this—an open forest of mature bloodwoods above ‘grass flats at the foot of the rock’.53 Others noted grass there:54 fire too frequent lets Spinifex take over, too infrequent lets in scrub, as in picture 24.
Erratic rainfall is the arid zone’s ace and wild card, spasmodically rearranging its plants. Within days a wilderness of sticks can burst with new growth, then within months shrivel to thirst-stricken survivors. As plants grow their battle for water gets harder, for they need more, and unless they find it drought will kill them. After 1889 Uluru had big Wets in the early 1920s, the mid 1940s, the early 1970s, 2000 and 2009–10, and big Drys in 1890–1, 1896–1906, 1914–15, 1925–34, the late 1950s–1967, the early 1990s and 2005–7.
Desert people knew when a drought was coming, but not how long it would last, so they guarded against it. If rain gave Uluru good feed and water, they left for less permanent water out in the desert; in bad drought they came back. If rain made new growth, they burnt mosaics and fire breaks over miles of country. Pastoralists could not do this so well, and other Europeans not at all, so wet years led to big fires in 1950 and 1976. From 1985 Anungu advice led to patch burning ‘every few years’ here, to pattern regrowth and break up fuel. Big 1990–91 fires were stopped when they reached mosaics.55
Spencer’s photo illustrates how local patch-burning was. Uluru sheds water over a narrow strip at its base, providing an extra drought defence. William Murray noted this strip on approaching Uluru during the 1902 drought: ‘All poor desert country, spinifex, sagebush, and scanty scrub until nearing the rock, when this gives place to an alluvial flat, with fair-sized bloodwood and dry grass and herbage.’56 Spencer shows the strip near Kantju, ‘a park-like landscape of big old ironwoods and bloodwoods’,57 with grass but almost no scrub. Outside it the foreground has no trees, but scrub appears, and other grasses give way to Spinifex. People have worked with the country, putting trees and grass where they grow best, but also against it, keeping scrub to the drier ground.
23
24
The 2005 photo shows no big trees. A few dead trunks mourn trees possibly standing in 1894. In 1996 elders reported the rest killed by the 1950s drought,58 which means they survived worse after Spencer’s visit. Perhaps they had got too big by the 1950s, but unlike before 1894 and after 1985, no caring management replaced them. On the other hand ‘quite dense’ young Ironwood, Desert Bloodwood and Plumbush fill the run-off strip, and Spinifex and introduced Buffel Grass have invaded it. Buffel dominates a foreground dotted with sticks and bushes from a controlled burn.
Between 1894 and 2005 water and fire changed this country dramatically, including in stages not shown. While erratic rain regulates Kantju’s plant distribution, it does not explain why the strip had big trees and no scrub in 1894, but small trees and dense scrub in 2005. Fire explains this: the same burning repeated for decades, then stopped. Even in arid country 1788’s unnatural patterns recur. There was no boundary where people burnt with skill and purpose on one side, and at random on the other.
25. Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), Ayers Rock, June 1894
26. Uluru, NT, 31 March 2005
25: Spencer Collection XP9973, MV [from Spencer and Gillen 1912, fig 44].
26: BG. Compare pictures 23–4, 27–30.
Soil decides which plants dominate where, drought whether they dominate at all. These photos convey the importance of soil type and water, and compare fire regimes. Both were taken near Uluru’s sunset car park; Kantju’s shade is at left. Both show burnt foreground scrub, but trees and scrub clothe Uluru’s run-off strip more densely in 2005 than in 1894, and 1894’s tallest trees have gone. In very wet times the middle ground channels Uluru run-off, yet it is bare in 1894 but thick with Spinifex, Cassia and Witchetty Bush in 2005.
Spencer took his photo on the way to Katajuta, noting that the ‘sandy plain was dotted over with thin scrub and, away in the distance, it was crossed by dark lines where, mile after mile, the thick mulga scrub stretched across’. At Katajuta he wrote, ‘The country between this and Ayers Rock is covered with the usual wiry shrubs of cassia plants and belts of mulga.’59 William Gosse rode this way from Uluru in August 1873:
At 2 miles the good country round the rock ends, and spinifex and oak sandhills commence, and continue to eight miles. Here the sandhills end, but the country is still spinifex and sand to twelve miles, with patches of mulga. From here the country is good, with abundance of good grass.
25
26
At Katajuta he reported, ‘The country immediately around the rocks is covered with dense mulga’ and a ‘few native peach trees’.60 Murray wrote, ‘At about one mile [from Uluru] the grassy flat ends, and is succeeded by heavy spinifex, sandhills, patches of mulga. This continues until nearing [Katajuta] . . . These hills are fringed with very dense mulga scrub—a large amount of it dead.’61 Clear of the rocks Spencer wrote of ‘thin scrub’ and Gosse of ‘spinifex and sand’ in country well vegetated in 2005.
Mulga and Desert Oak help to explore these changes. Mulga prefers loam, Oak prefers sand. Both have spread since 1894. In 2005 Mulga covered much more than 1894’s ‘patches’ towards Katajuta. Between 1873 and 1902 only Gosse noted Oak, and only on sand dunes. In 2005 Oak was common, still on sand but not only dunes. Thus in 1894 each species kept to its soil, but not all its soil. Something else influenced their distribution.
Desert Oak accepts all but the fiercest fires, fire promotes its seed, and fires every decade or so help it dominate. All but the coolest fires kill Mulga. Fire opens and rain germinates its seed, but seedlings take 10–20 years to set. Any fire in that time must be very gentle, once a decade at most, on green or wet ground, in light wind. Such a fire promotes grass and thins the stand. A hot burn might be set at most every 50 years or so to kill the Mulga, and the new stand left for another 50 years.62 In short, burning Oak about every decade and Mulga about every 50 years kept each flourishing but apart in 1894, whereas in 2005 they grew together.
In October 1873 Gosse saw a hot burn in the Musgrave Ranges. He ‘had a most unpleasant ride for about eight miles through burning mulga scrub; the trees were falling in all directions, and quantities of dead wood blazing on the ground . . . Some natives had been seen about here; they have burned the grass all round.’63 Those eight miles were open enough to ride through while ablaze. Cool fires had thinned the stand; now Gosse saw a hotter fire clearing it.
The photos imply fire regimes varying in timing and intensity. On Uluru’s run-off they shielded bloodwoods but cleared scrub and grew grass. On Katajuta’s run-offs they promoted Mulga. On land between they kept at least one strip bare (as a fire break?), burnt dunes every decade or so for Desert Oak and scrub, but some swales every 50 years or so for Mulga. No wonder managers at Uluru, in the dunes, on the plain and at Katajuta were not the same men. By 2005 they were burning more to tourist taste, promoting plants but limiting fuel. It is incongruous to think, as some do, that they planned in 2005 but not in 1894.
27. Charles Mountford (1890–1976), The Rock, cJuly 1938
28. Mountford’s Uluru, NT, 31 March 2005
27: PRG1218/34/1164A, SLSA . [Mountford 1953, at 144].
28: BG. Compare pictures 23–6, 29–30.
Mountford shows his return from Katajuta. ‘Stretching out before us’, he wrote of this spot, ‘was a wide, sandy flat, covered so thickly with spinifex in seed that it resembled a wheat field ready for harvest. Spotted on the flaxen-yellow plain were the graceful, dark-foliaged desert oaks.’64 1938 was in the cattle t
imes, the 1920s to the 1950s, when this country was a Mt Conner outstation, stocked if rain permitted. Grazing and frequent fire can impact similarly, clearing grass and young scrub, exposing roots, intensifying drought, letting Spinifex dominate. In 1938 Spinifex shrouded dunes and flats much more open than in 1894.
27
28
Next day Mountford climbed Uluru and photographed the country back to Katajuta.65 Most land was bare. Near Uluru were trees but almost no scrub or grass, not even Spinifex. Towards Katajuta there was Spinifex and a few trees, but only hints of Spencer’s ‘thick mulga scrub’. The land looks drought-stricken; it is cattle-stricken.
In 1950 this area became a national park. For 35 years little was done to manage its plants, and Mountford’s track became densely vegetated. ‘Perhaps the area hasn’t been burnt correctly or often enough,’ Johnny Jingo politely suggested in October 1995. ‘If it is, it gets green all around after a bushfire.’66 In 2005 Cassia and Corkwood dunes alternate with acacia and Desert Oak flats. Mature Oaks stand about where a few Oaks dot Mountford’s middle ground, and the upright shafts of young Oak scatter widely. There is little Spinifex, though some is just off camera.
Soil type, rain, and patch-burning made this variety. The 2005 scrub is denser than the ‘thin scrub’ Spencer saw, with less grass, and much denser than in Mountford’s time. The land is burnt less often and less precisely than in 1894, but then and now it is made.
29–30. Fire-scarred dunes in the Great Sandy Desert west
of Lake Mackay, WA, 24 July 1953 and 25 June 2005
29: Webb run 12, 5092 (detail), PALM, c~ Neil Burrows. 30: Google Earth 2010.
The lighter the scar the more recent the fire. Picture 29 (about 52 km2) shows people burning small patches in light wind and into old scars. Straight lines mark where a fire lighter walked, choosing what to burn and what not. Directed by wind rather than ground, this was not easy walking. It shows purpose. Picture 30, a slightly bigger area, reflects a critical change after people moved or were moved out: fires became less frequent, bigger and hotter.67
From RAAF photos covering 241,000 ha, including picture 29, Neil Burrows and colleagues distinguished scars spanning ‘at least 5–6 years’. Local Pintupi people said that fires might be lit at any time to hunt, signal or clean country, and because they were frequent most were small, like the ‘several smokes’ David Carnegie saw here in 1896.68
More exactly, because people wanted them small, most fires were frequent. People used big fires to hunt, but few were lit in order to hunt (ch 6). Small, cool fires hunted best. When they ceased, patch numbers fell from 846 in 1953 to four in 1981, their mean size increased from 64 ha to 52,664 ha, and vital habitat edges decreased from 3888 kilometres in 1953 to 392 kilometres in 2000. Along with introduced grazers and predators, notably cats, this huge change caused the extinction or decline of over a third of small desert animal species. Not burning starved them: ‘no longer any green shoots’, as the Pintupi put it.69
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30
In the late 1980s people began returning to the desert. At Amata in 2002 Frank Young found it hard to generalise about fire practices so local and variable, because how and when people burnt depended on what they were burning, and why. In general Spinifex was burnt more often than Cassia or Witchetty Bush, and much more often than Mulga or Desert Oak. Further north big fires might be lit before rain in summer,70 but Amata people usually burnt in the cold time (June–July) when fires were most easily controlled. The first fires were backburns around places needing protection. Some places were always protected, others varied from year to year. In 2002 elders were concerned for dragon lizards, so burnt cool fires around lizard habitats and Dreaming sites, often the same places. Later fires were generally downwind of protected sites, and lit when the grass was dewy in early morning or late afternoon, depending on how far the fire must travel (ch 6). In the cold time cold air and ground moisture stifle fires soon after dusk, so most were lit about three hours before. Burning stopped when the winds came about late August.71
Not everyone at Amata had Frank’s concern for country. In 2001–2 kids in cars lit casual fires along roads. Strong northerlies picked them up and drove red lines of flame along widening fronts, stretching white-ash Mulga skeletons on the ground. Yet in 2005 at least four fire generations marked country between Derby (WA) and Alice Springs. Locally they tended to run the same way, but overall might run in any direction, mostly across dunes as in picture 30, although the best controlled fires run along dunes.72 Most patches were much bigger than in 1953, but near Gosse’s Bluff big fires about 2003 were followed by small patches lit in autumn 2005.73 Over a vast area traditional fire management is being revived.
PICTURES 31–37: 1788 FIRE PATTERNS—EDGES
31. Joseph Lycett (c1775–1828), View from near the Top
of Constitution Hill, Van Diemen’s Land, c1821
PIC U488, NLA [from Lycett 1825]. Compare pictures 13, 18, 34–5, 42, 51, 54–8.
31
This and pictures 34 and 51 depict places Lycett never saw. As a convict he could not have copied them unless allowed, probably by Macquarie, who visited all three places in 1820– 21. This view’s original was probably by George Evans or James Taylor, surveyors who came here with Macquarie in April–July 1821.74 The view is about south from Swans Hill, 2 kilometres south of today’s Constitution Hill,75 over sharp-edged forest–plain belts putting grass near shelter and concealing hunters. This required distinct but adjacent burning regimes, long maintained.
Charles Jeffreys wrote of near here, ‘these plains occupy an extent of country of twelve miles in length, and near three in breadth, and are . . . but thinly covered with timber, so that in some places, for upwards of half a mile square, there are scarcely a hundred trees standing; while the grass is in general about three feet long’.76 Lycett’s View of Tasman’s Peak from Macquarie Plains, Van Diemen’s Land (1822?) offers a nearer view of similar forest– plain belts, which Macquarie described (ch 7). They were common not only in Tasmania (ch 7). West of Forbes (NSW) Oxley saw ‘considerable spaces of clear ground . . . interspersed amidst the ocean of trees’. His drawing shows plains of varying elevation alternately timbered and clear, much as here.77
32. A eucalypt–grass mosaic, northeast Tasmania, 9 February 1998
Colour A113, 1288–167, NE Forestry run 18E (detail). Base image by TAS MAP (www.tasmap.tas.gov.au), © State of Tasmania. Compare pictures 14, 21, 31, 37, 41–2, 46–50.
Creeks frame hills: for example the road at left follows a ridge which falls to a creek on each side. Grass is both higher and lower than trees, but most crests are treed. People used different fires to make tree–grass–water edges, and clumps in plains.
Lively’s Bog, the land in the road loop at top left centre, typifies the area. East from trees, grassland drops to a swampy creek, then rises past tree clumps to a semicircle of forest. This was a wallaby trap. Prey could reach grass safely through trees, which then let hunters drive it into the swamp.78 This template fills the country. Grass burnt in sequence rotated wallabies predictably from one patch to the next, harvesting different mobs and never making one mob too spear-shy. The flats are rich but the high ground is poor, so this is a good use of it.
Near Lively’s Bog, Patsy Cameron believes, is where George Robinson, the ‘great conciliator’, met her ancestor Mannalargenna on 1 November 1830. That day Robinson found the area ‘tolerably clear, principally peppermint’, and the previous day ‘found the bush on fire for a considerable distance . . . It had before every appearance of being wet and the rain had now come.’79 This suggests fire for grass rather than seed or tubers, lit when rain would promote re-greening.
In 1831 Thomas Lewis found the country behind St Helens, not far southeast of Lively’s Bog, generally forest alternating between shrubby and grassy understoreys. The west sides of some hills were grassy, and grassy plains about a mile long and half a mile wide alternated with grassy woodland patches of about 500
acres.80 Without fire most of Tasmania, including here, would be rainforest.
32
33. Eugen von Guerard (1811–1901), The Sources
of the River Wannon, Victoria, 1858
PIC S1021, NLA [from von Guerard]. Compare pictures 35–6, 39, 42–3, 55–8.
Von Guerard’s vantage point (overleaf) is above the Yarram Gap road near Talbert Point on the Serra Range, looking about south to Mt Abrupt.81 His painting closely follows his on-site drawing.82 In the sky two crows (?) strafe an eagle (?), perhaps a detail he saw here.
The slopes, he noted, were ‘lightly timbered with gum and she-oak; while the mountains . . . [are] stringybark’.83 His foreground shows wattle or young gum and sheoak, and in contrast to the mountains it is open. The central plain is not natural: the Wannon escapes from thick forest to thread it, and trees grow on it now. It was burnt for grass. Along its edges sawtooth tongues of forest mimic the mountain rims, and bite into grassland to let hunters ambush prey. CJ Tyers described this pattern:
the Country for several miles above the Wannon [is] fine, having much the appearance of English Parks. Above Mr Patterson’s homestead, the forest is much thicker, and the soil deteriorates although the grass is equally good . . . The Country intersected by the Wannon (Kairairalla of the Natives) is of a very superior description—generally open; some parts lightly covered with . . . Blackwood.84
This template was common (ch 8). Von Guerard’s Spring in the Valley of the Mitta Mitta (1866) depicts an example; in 1839–40 WW Darke surveyed another on the Werribee; in 1840 Townsend surveyed a third on the Moorabool.85 In 1813 Evans described plains on the Fish River (NSW):
I came on a fine Plain of rich Land, the handsomest Country I ever saw . . . the Track of clear land occupies about a Mile on each side of the River . . . the Timber around is thinly scattered, I do not suppose there are more than ten Gum Trees on an Acre . . . I stopped at the commencement of a Plain still more pleasing and very Extensive. I cannot see the termination of it North of me; the soil is exceeding rich and produces the finest grass intermixed with variety of herbs; the hills have the look of a park and Grounds laid out . . . there is Game in abundance; if we want a Fish it is caught immediately.86
