by Bill Gammage
This land was cleared for soldier settlement in the early 1950s. Ron and Jean Nunn moved onto their farm, ‘Lyndhurst’, Section 14, Hundred of Duncan, in 1954. It has a ploughed paddock inside its east boundary at centre, and a tree block being cleared and burnt outside its west boundary at top left. Out of picture a tree belt along the north boundary sheltered a creek. The soil is sandy and the topsoil shallow. The settlement scheme required at least 5 per cent scrub to be left, and most was bulldozed to about that before settlers took it up.
Ron was a ’dozer driver, but cleared only 240 of Lyndhurst’s 1312 acres, and a similar proportion on the farm to the east. He left hill tops, creek lines, run-offs and useful timber like Pink Gum and Swamp Gum for wood and shelter and to slow wind erosion. Cleared land was ‘fed and flogged’ with super, manure and trace elements, and made good crop and fodder country.
These patterns evoke 1788 fire. So do the results. Ron and Jean saw a big increase in wallabies, possums, bandicoots and many other birds and animals. As expected they found that tree belts saved topsoil and grass. Although their cleared country was less than on most district farms, by the 1960s their production was comparable, and their productivity was going up while that of others was going down.
Progressive farmers today are familiar with such results. Like people in 1788, they know a small area intimately, and apply local remedies to local problems, although too few trees, not too many, is now the more common problem. Landcare encourages tree planting, and Peter Andrews has listed the great benefits of returning pasture to trees or water.191 Near Gunning (NSW) John Weatherstone ran 50 per cent more stock on 15 per cent less land after he began large scale tree planting.192 Similar results are sprouting across Australia, especially in the south. Compared to 1788 this is rudimentary, but well ahead of general understanding.
WHY WAS ABORIGINAL
LAND MANAGEMENT
POSSIBLE?
3
The nature of Australia
Australia’s plants, animals, insects and bacteria have changed greatly since 1788. Some have vanished, some have prospered, some have arrived. These changes obscure what Australia was like in 1788, and so how people managed it. In this chapter, Notes 1–7 illustrate how Australia’s plants made precise land management possible, while Changes 1–5 select changes since 1788 which veil this.
Change 1. Since 1788 compacted soil and speeding water have constricted water sources and the foods they nourished.
The earth has changed. Topsoil blows away, hills slip, gullies scour, silt chokes, salt spreads, soil compacts. The last is least noticed. Much of 1788’s soil was soft enough to push a finger into—‘naturally soft’, Thomas Mitchell called it.1 Hence the Major’s Line, the tracks his drays pressed across Victoria in 1836, guiding travellers for decades. Around Clermont (Qld) the soil was ‘exceedingly friable and rich; being unstocked and therefore untrodden, it was “ashy”, and the horses travelled over their fetlocks in the loose soil’.2 Some called such soil ‘rotten’: ‘all the country about Lake George’, Mark Currie wrote in 1823, ‘and between it and Lake Bathurst, is very rotten, making the riding bad’.3 Such places are rare now, and in a dry continent that matters. In Victoria, Isaac Batey recalled ‘the soil becoming hardened with the continuous trampling of the sheep cattle or horses. In proof of that Mr Edward Page said “When we first came here I started a vegetable garden, the soil dug like ashes” . . . Nowadays . . . a common spade would be useless.’4
Soft soil let water soak in rather than run off, so less rain sustained more plants. In 1891 the New South Wales Government Botanist lamented,
There is no gainsaying the fact that ever since pastoral settlement took place there has been a gradual decrease of many valuable salicious and other forage plants from the central plains of this continent, partly through the constant trampling of the animals’ hoofs, which has also made the surface soils so hard that seeds with difficulty germinate.5
In 1901 James Cotton, a Cobar (NSW) pioneer, recalled,
before this district was stocked . . . [it] was covered with a heavy growth of natural grasses . . . The ground was soft, spongy and very absorbent. One inch of rain then, in spring or autumn, produced a luxurious growth of fresh green grass . . . a gradual deterioration of the country caused by stock . . . has transformed the land from its original soft, spongy, absorbent nature to a hard clayey, smooth surface (more specially on the ridges), which instead of absorbing the rain runs it off in a sheet as fast as it falls.6
In 1935 an inland pastoralist found that the rain needed to flood his creeks had more than halved since 1900: water ‘once absorbed by the surface soil of the slopes now finds its way direct to the creek’.7
The water has changed. Once it ran slower and clearer. The Darling below Bourke was ‘beautifully transparent, the bottom was visible at great depths, showing large fishes in shoals, floating like birds in mid-air’.8 Most water ran shallower, on shallower beds:
A succession of deep depressions is a very common arrangement in the structure of the beds of the Australian rivers . . . They act as natural tanks or reservoirs, retaining a supply of the vital element long after it has disappeared from other parts of the channels, giving to them the appearance of a chain of ponds. These depressions . . . belong, more or less, to all the Australian rivers, with the exception, perhaps, of the Murray.9
Eyre found the Lachlan ‘like a deep creek, with water in only for a few hundred yards from its mouth’.10
On plains, streams broke bank often. Most were distributaries, not tributaries: they flowed from river to creek to plain. As Australia warmed in recent millennia they slowed and dumped sediment. Beds and banks built up, perching the streams and spreading overflows far. The lower Lachlan ‘overflows its banks to a depth of three or four feet’, Oxley wrote in 1817, yet ‘in dry summers, there is no running water in the bed’. He thought the overflows ‘certainly’ exceeded 40 miles.11 Perched beds and silt flanks trace ancient stream courses today. Many have reversed: water flows into rivers, not out.
By 1888 fast water was scouring out so many gullies that erosion was among the first environmental problems Australia recognised.12 The water did not slow when it reached a stream. It silted then cleared, shiny clay beds showing where it cut deep. Alfred Howitt reported:
The increase of floods was supposed to be caused by a diminution of timber, but he was inclined to think that they were to be accounted for by the hardening of the country generally . . . The water ran off the country far more rapidly than it had previously done, and even assuming that there was no difference in the rainfall, he would expect the floods to come down with far greater rapidity than was formerly the case. The cutting power of the Snowy River for instance, was very great . . . In many cases the sides of the valley were completely stripped to the rock, and so far as he knew, there was not a tree standing within the flood marks in that valley.13
On big rivers, water was speeded by improvers de-snagging and blasting rock bars for boats or paddle steamers. Clearing the Torrens of scrub and logs let the heavy 1851 rains reach Adelaide fifteen minutes sooner than any earlier flood, with a force that cut deep into the old bed, necessitating bridges. In 1862 an old colonist regretted that the river had ‘worn a deeper channel in the soft soil of the plains’.14
In 1889 the Deniliquin (NSW) Pastoral Times unwittingly indicated how quickly channels could be cut:
Some time since there seemed to be a doubt in the minds of the Deniliquin civic fathers about the true source of the Edward, and one alderman who had lived as he said, ‘for thirty years’ in the locality stated that he never could locate the mouth. Well, his powers of observation must have been very limited. The mouth is a well defined channel twenty or thirty feet wide with banks six feet deep and perpendicular. The channel runs for over half a mile from the Murray.15
The civic fathers could not have missed that channel. It came after them. When Mitchell saw the Nogoa at ‘Lake’ Salvator (Qld) in 1846 it was a braided stream: b
y 1905 the north course was a deep channel, by 1960 the south course was, and the lake was gone.16 In 1850 Charles Strutt depicted a Murrumbidgee unrecognisable today. At Jugiong it was ‘a fine stream, running over pebbles’, at Gundagai it had ‘clear water’, at Bangus there was ‘a convenient ford, where the water was about three feet deep, very clear, and flowing over pebbles’ and the river was ‘here and there shallow, but now and then deep, with great holes’.17 Most of these holes, so favoured by fish and fishermen, have silted up, and above Gundagai the river is more sandy than pebbly. West of Narrandera it has cut deep into its old bed since Thomas Townsend’s 1850 survey of it. With shallow banks and shallow water, his river often ran dry, while at least four fords were so reliable that settlers put head-stations by them. There are no fords now, and the 1850 bed is metres up today’s bank.18 The legendary Clancy’s Overflow, on the Cooper, is Channel country now.19
Change 2. In 1788 more water softened drought, spread resources, and let people walk easily over more of Australia. Even in arid regions they could expect to care for all their country, and think its plants and animals always sustainable.
Shallow streams and overflows flushed more of Australia, filling billabongs, swamps and holes, and recharging springs and soaks. In ‘the middle of an apparently dry forest . . .’, Oxley remarked in northern New South Wales, ‘the surface gave way but little to the human tread, but the horses were scarcely on it before the water sprang at every step, and the ground sank with them to their girths’.20 Reed beds which have moved since 1788 flag changing water flows. The Murray pioneer Henry Lewes recalled of near Moama (NSW), ‘The low tract between the plains and the Murray . . . was mostly clear swamp, where afterwards it became covered by impenetrable reed beds.’21 More often, faster water swept beds away, like those on the Murray once so vast and dense that for days overlanders could not get stock to water.22 Reeds were vital refuges for fish and birds, and bulrush (cumbungi) was a staple food for months each year.23 It still fills backwaters, but fewer, giving little hint of how widespread it was in 1788.
Small water caches were common. Sturt, Eyre, Leichhardt, Giles and others got used to water in unlikely places, and owed their lives to finding it in country now dry. In October 1845 Sturt followed a ‘native path’ north of the Cooper looking for water. He reached some huts, and
at length we found a small, narrow, and deep channel of but a few yards in length, hid in long grass . . . The water was about three feet deep, and was so sheltered that I made no doubt it would last for ten days or a fortnight . . . I allowed the horses to rest and feed on the grass for a time; but it was of the kind from which the natives collect so much seed, and though beautiful to the eye, was not relished by our animals.24
The district was in at least its second year of drought, yet Sturt wrote as though his find was natural. Perhaps it was, but Aborigines sheltered it. They promoted a grass which deterred stock and therefore kangaroos, and its shelter kept open miles of surrounding country.
Over half the water sources in the Murray–Darling catchment, Australia’s biggest, have gone since 1788.25 In arid Australia few remain beyond those people protect, and even on the coast springs and soaks have dried or choked. Water was drained for pasture or crop and diverted from swamps, which dried back. Settlers stripped sheltering scrub, stock trampled protecting edges, wet spots silted up or were ploughed in. Dams and irrigation often replace what was once there anyway.
The changes let drought bite harder. ‘Drought’ is a subjective notion. What we call a ‘drought-adapted’ species is adapted to what we think drought is, not what it does. For us drought is the gap between what water comes in, and what goes out. Today we feel this gap sooner than did people in 1788, not least because the gap widens as population increases. Rain which broke a drought then does not now. Fewer overflows and compacted soil let water replenish less country. In 1938 a veteran pastoralist wrote that overstocking forced stock to uproot the grass, which let rain run off the bare ground ‘instead of being held up by the rooted pastures as of old, soaking into the ground, finding its own level, and reappearing in the form of springs’.26 1788’s kind quilt of springs, soaks, caches and wetlands has gone.
Change 3. Grass was widely available during Australia’s toughest season, offering management opportunities rare in Europe. Except in the Wet, people could burn grass at almost any time, knowing it would re-shoot green. They could expect to attract grass eaters and their predators, especially in summer when today grass is scarce and animals stressed. This let them manage land not merely to help animals survive, but to make them abundant, convenient and predictable.
Drought has been intensified by the upset of Australia’s grasses. In 1788 these were typically drought-hardy, summer flourishing tussock perennials. ‘Nothing which I observed’, Morton wrote northwest of Rockhampton in 1859,
caused in me so much astonishment as the greenness of the grass. I had expected to see it all dried up by the heat of the tropical climate. At the beginning of September there had been no rain for four months, yet everywhere the grass was remarkably green, and became greener every week till I left in November.27
1788’s most widespread grass was Kangaroo Grass, caviar to grazers if burnt regularly. It deserves a statue. More than any other it fed Australia’s early stock, and settler prosperity. It heads in late summer, its base still green, providing feed when most needed (pictures 10–11). It has disadvantages. Its corkscrew seeds work through the toughest hide, and its tussocks leave bare ground between, which many settlers thought wasteful. Edward Curr noted what others welcomed:
In the greater portion of Australia, indeed nearly all of it, the grass originally grew in large tussocks, standing from two to twenty feet apart, according to circumstances. It bore no resemblance to a sward, and when one drove over it in a dog-cart, a succession of bumps was experienced from its lumpy way of growing. Gradually, as the tussocks got fed down by sheep and cattle, they stooled out; and the seed got trampled into the ground around them, and in the absence of bush fires grew, so that presently a sward more or less close resulted, such as we see at present.28
Squatters speeded the change. They wanted to improve winter pastures when perennials were dormant, and they wanted grasses from home which they knew rotated usefully with crops. North of Armidale (NSW), John Everett was typical of more thoughtful squatters. He admired native grasses, but from 1841 spent heavily on planting clover, lucerne, rye and other familiar pastures.29
While squatters improved in this way, their stock ate out native feed. As early as 1820 Gregory Blaxland stated, ‘The best is oat [Kangaroo] grass, which I have observed of late years has failed . . . Where much stock has been kept, the oat grass has nearly disappeared, and a new and inferior has appeared.’30 A west Victorian pioneer blamed fire for the loss,
In 1846 all the country around here . . . was covered with kangaroo grass—splendid summer feed for stock of all kinds. It was at its best . . . [from] January . . . to May, but it lost its colour after that, and gave place to a finer grass . . . The country was like this for some years after 1846, until destroyed by the indiscreet use of fire.31
Kangaroo Grass is promoted by fire, and declines if it doesn’t get it. For generations discreet fire let it flourish while conserving herbs, yams, orchids, lilies, winter annuals and other grassland plants. Inept burning and overgrazing put this assemblage under stress.32 Fodder grasses yielded to unpalatable grasses and woody weeds. The loss led graziers to introduce more exotics, then superphosphate, essential for exotics in Australia’s phosphate-poor soils but lethal to natives. Wherever settlers made grassland pasture, native perennials faded. By the 1940s Kangaroo and similar grasses were refugees in fenced-off reserves and parks where stock and improvers could not get at them, although they are coming back now as stock numbers fall.
The change was revolutionary. Tall summer flourishing perennials resist drought by shielding soil moisture or holding it in dense roots. Roots are typically half their bulk, w
hereas in annuals roots vary from half when mature to almost none when dead or sprouting. Summer feed is priceless in Australia. In summer most native annuals seed; exotic annuals die; native perennials thrive. Equally important, most perennials tolerate fire. Burn them in summer and they re-shoot green. Burn annuals and they die. This fact is critical to understanding 1788 management.
Few newcomers realised this, though they saw its effects. On the Macintyre (NSW) during the 1827 drought Allan Cunningham was ‘surprised to observe how wonderfully the native grasses had resisted the dry weather on the upper banks of this dried watercourse. They appeared fresh and nutritive, affording abundance of provision to the many kangaroos that were bounding around us.’33 Near Adelaide in mid-summer Dirk Hahn saw shepherds ‘grazing their flocks on meadows made green by Nature’.34 On the Macquarie and Narran in the 1845–6 summer, Mitchell wrote often that it was hot, but as often of the many ‘verdant grasses’.35 On Flood’s Creek north of Broken Hill (NSW) in November 1844, Sturt wrote,
the heat was very great, [but] the cereal grasses had not yet ripened their seed, and several kinds had not even developed the flower. Everything in the neighbourhood looked fresh, vigorous, and green, and on its banks (not, I would observe, on the plains, because on them there was a grass peculiar to such localities) the animals were up to their knees in luxuriant vegetation.36
In 1788 Australia’s summer tan proclaimed life; by 1888 dead creams and whites were fast becoming proof of unyielding drought (picture 12).37
Change 4. In 1788 trees, saltbush and perennial grasses mitigated salinity; now it is spreading.
Salt infuses most of Australia. This was so in 1788. The Centre’s vast lakes are salt, and Salt, Saltwater and Saltpan rivers and creeks speckle maps. Victoria’s Maribyrnong was once Saltwater River; WA’s Mortlock was once Salt River. In April 1839 Jane Franklin reported ‘a dried lagoon whitened with salt’ near Mt Macedon (Vic),38 and on Darling backblocks in August 1875 George Fortey found several lakes ‘even more salt than the Ocean. All this part of the country appears to be a mass of salt as you may see it on the ground as you ride along.’ The salt was up to eighteen inches thick.39
