by Bill Gammage
He might have been in Tasmania; he was at Port Essington in Arnhem Land.
In central west New South Wales, Oxley halted ‘on a small patch of burnt grass . . . our view was confined to the scrubby brush around us’.114 Similar clearings pocked Blue Mountains forest. Above Grose Valley in 1804 was ‘a small piece of ground, which was destitute of trees, and no herbaceous brush’, north of Katoomba in 1813 ‘about two thousand acres of land Clear of trees’, and further west ‘spaces of Ground of 3 or 400 Acres with grass growing within them that you can scarce walk through’.115 On the Macleay, ‘All the distance of twenty miles from the mouth of the river, and from thence to the point where the river ceases to be navigable, the brush land is interspersed with small alluvial plains, clear of trees, and varying in extent from fifty to a hundred acres. These clear patches of ground possess all the exuberant fertility of the brush land’, and were no lower.116 On the Illawarra coast, ‘Lofty cedars, graceful tree ferns, and stately palms, raise their heads over a thick undergrowth of wild vines, creeping plants, and shrubs . . . Grassy meadows are interspersed throughout, destitute of timber, and enclosed with a border of palms.’117 On the range behind Wollongong
was a small grassy forest on the hill side; and everywhere around it . . . was thick tangled brush growing amidst lofty trees, so thick set that beneath them was perpetual shadow . . . a little patch of grassy forest would assert a place for itself on the shoulder of a hill, and partly down the side; but generally the entire surface of this mountain, for many miles up and down the coast every way, was clothed with this thick brush.118
A grassy slope in dense forest was ideal for food vines and brush wallabies (pictures 38–41, 44–5).
In June 1822, though later he claimed it was earlier, Berry sailed south from Sydney seeking land. At the Shoalhaven he met Wagin, who courteously told him of ‘a piece of clear meadow ground . . . I asked him who cleared it. He replied that all he knew about it was—that it was in the same state in the days of his grandfather.’ It was one of several clearings in rainforest fringing the river. Berry put his head-station on one nearby, naming it Coolangatta after the name Wagin gave him of a dominant mountain, a ‘well grassed eminence’ now forest. Later he gave a ship the name, and when it was wrecked on a Gold Coast beach, the beach took the name north.119
In western Victoria ‘a long extent of indifferently heathy country, extend[ed] eastward nearly to the valley of the Glenelg, but interspersed with patches here and there of grassy land’.120 Northeast, Curr found
a narrow opening in the reeds into what proved to be a charming little savannah of perhaps half a square mile in extent. The grass in it was about a foot high, and so thick that the tread of our horses was as noiseless as that of the camel . . . The reeds were by [sic] patches and strips of different hues and growth, in accordance with their ages and the periods at which they had last been burnt . . . we also noticed several patches of good open country.121
In ‘a thick part of the scrub’ near Mt Serle (SA), Henderson ‘crossed a small patch of luxuriant grass, certainly the richest herbage since we left the depot’, and below Mt Bryan ‘the scrub . . . was intersected by several small grassy plains’.122 Near Mannum (SA) Eyre had
to force our way thro’ a very dense pine scrub for some distance; then came an open plain for three or four miles, followed by scrub again and heavy sand . . . On the tableland there was also a good deal of open land at intervals, grassy and suitable for sheep . . . the country back from the river sandy but very grassy, lightly wooded and well adapted for grazing. Kangaroo, emus and wild turkies abounded.123
East of Perth Moore described the plain behind his house:
perhaps two hundred acres, upon which large trees are not numerous, or more than sufficient for ornament. There is one spot looking like a cleared field, of eight or nine acres, not encumbered with a single tree or shrub . . . This large plain is skirted by a thick border of red gum trees, intermixed with banksias, black wattles, and other shrubs.124
The same pattern yarded desert kangaroos.125 East of Ooldea ‘Wynbring was certainly a most agreeable little oasis, an excellent spot for an explorer to come to in such a frightful region . . . there being splendid green feed and herbage on the few thousand acres of open ground around the rock.’126 At Warman Rocks west of Kintore (NT) an Erldunda man ‘pointed out’ to Tietkins ‘a particular burnt patch, it was not the only one by any means, there were dozens, but Billy seemed convinced that water was there’. They found ‘a grassy glade dotted over with mulgas . . . a native well, and after that a rock waterhole’, and at the same spot next day, ‘some few hundred acres of excellent grass land . . . which in this region is almost as scarce as water’.127 At the head of the Bight, Warburton rode ‘through scrub, in the midst of which were occasional oases of green herbage, singularly clear and defined, and contrasting strangely with the surrounding scrub. There was, however, no water in these verdant spots.’128 Not far inland John Forrest rode
through dense mallee thickets, destitute of grass or water, for eighteen miles. We came upon a small patch of open grassy land . . . continuing, chiefly through dense mallee thickets, with a few grassy flats intervening, for twenty-two miles, found another rock water-hole . . . after travelling one mile from it, camped on a large grassy flat, without water for the horses.129
Water was often handy but hidden (ch 8)—Eyre met people in Murray mallee clearings, where artifacts are still found.130131
In rainforest especially, hills might be cleared (pictures 44–5). In Queensland’s brushy Cardwell Range, Dalrymple saw ‘a line of perfectly open, bald, grassy summits for about two miles . . . [and to] the west a shallow valley full of scrub, bounded by a second line of low bald hills’.132 These clearings were named and valued. Augustus Leycester walked through
a glade in the brush, we saw at a distance ‘Bald Hill’ . . . an old camping ground of mine (called by the blacks ‘Byangully’) and replete with every comfort a bush camp in Australia can afford, that of grass, water, and game, in abundance of the best kind. It was a small prairie on a bald hill, surrounded by a dense brush twenty miles distant from the open country we had left behind.
Southwest of Mt Warning (NSW), ‘Mt Tanning’ had
a table-top covered with fine grass, and studded over with a beautiful species of palm-tree called by the aborigines ‘Tanning’, its sides were covered with a dense brush, containing cedars and pines of gigantic size. What a lovely spot, all Nature seemed to be indulging in repose. The birds and animals seemed to know no danger, and looked on us with curiosity more than fear, they knew not that we were their most dangerous enemies. The pigeons and turkeys would sit to be shot at in the trees, and appeared only to wonder when their feathered companions fell from the deadly effects of our weapons of war . . . This was the one of the grandest spots for a naturalist, or an artist, I ever met with, for it was surrounded with Nature’s charms—all in their primitive beauty.133
District table-tops are forest now, with few animals. In Queensland, Tooalla
was not insignificant in size, being over a mile in length east and west, and a little less in breadth, its uppermost level small, and almost bald hills, connected by low saddles, all its outer boundary falling steeply away in radiating spurs, its centre dished by a miniature swamp that was drained by a puny but never ceasing stream . . . In this swamp there are rushes, and round about plenty of good grass; timber scant and stunted—oak and ti-tree.134
Grass-forest associations varied by belts, clumps and clearings marked out a continent deliberately and usefully arranged. But people did not stop there. They integrated these associations into a brilliantly efficient land use system. They made templates.
8
Templates
People today think of what animals need. In 1788 people thought of what animals prefer. This is a crucial difference. What animals prefer always attracts them. Kangaroos crowd onto golf greens. They don’t need to, they prefer to. For short grass they defy f
lying golf balls and angry greenkeepers even when safer grass is metres away. Possums prefer fresh tips, so move readily from unburnt urban parks and fringes into green-laden backyards. In the Centre native bees prefer Desert Bloodwood, so people take care not to let flames or smoke damage its flowers.1 Most animals prefer particular shelter: euros rocky hills, koalas tall eucalypts, scrub wallabies thick growth. Even scavengers have preferences. Emus eat grain, tips, flowers, insects, mice and small lizards but prefer fruit, so such adaptable opportunists can still be attracted.
People catered to preferences. They coupled preferred feed and shelter by refining grass, forests, belts, clumps and clearings into templates: unlike plant communities associated, distributed and maintained for decades or centuries to prepare country for day-to-day working. Templates set land and life patterns for generations of people. They were the land’s finishing touches, offering abundance, predictability, continuity and choice. Typically people chose a feature like water, hill or rock, and laid out a template on or beside it. Grass might separate forest from water, tree belts channel a plain, grass and heath alternate, clearings line a rainforest ridge, and so on. Templates for a plant were put where best suited plant and people; templates for an animal were kept suitably apart but linked into mosaics ultimately continent wide. Each template might have multiple uses or overlap, but together they rotated growth in planned sequences, some to harvest, some to lure and locate. They were thus of many kinds, some still detectable, others now gone forever in resurgent forest or dried-out wetlands.
All demanded controlled fire. It was not the only shepherd: bans, sanctuaries and totems reinforced abundance; open seasons and culling limited excess; planting improved crop yields (ch 10). But fire was the closest ally. Random fire defied the logic of templates. It could damage a template but not repair it. It could leave clumps and patches but not sustain them over generations. It made animals disperse, not concentrate. It could not distinguish fire to hunt from fire to lure. It was never welcome. System and precision were its enemies.
Controlled fire could govern where animals would and would not go because Australia, alone of continents, had few big predators. Crocodile, dingo, goanna, snake, eagle, quoll and Tasmanian tiger and devil exhaust the list, and some of these scavenge more than hunt. Few threatened people or deterred grazers, so templates activated in rotation could be as close and apart as suited their animals, and alternated with country meant to deter—an unlike template or a natural feature. Robinson noted, ‘The inland natives have their hunting grounds for the different species of game, i.e. boomer, forester, wallaby, kangaroo, wombat, porcupine &c, the same as the coast natives have for their fish, such as particular rocks for mutton fish, crawfish, oysters, mussles, chitons &c.’2 These are very precise distinctions. Speckling land and sea in this way secured diversity, predictability and convenience. Few Europeans recognised this deliberate variety. Almost all thought the landscape natural. The great gift Australia’s plants gave, to let people shape the land with fire, had few British parallels.
Tasmania and the mainland can each be seen as one template system, island-wide, for given the Law a system could not terminate. It was inescapably co-operative. Like templates had to be not too many or too few, too close or too far. They had to reconcile sometimes delicate and conflicting interests: predator vs prey, fireweed vs seed eater, annual herb vs perennial feed. Was a template for hunting, harvesting, camping or sanctuary? Was a ceremony planned or completed? How normal was the weather, how experienced the fire managers? What should be done if it was time to burn grass for kangaroos or yams, but its lizards or bees had had a bad year? Neighbours and totems must negotiate. The very existence of totems evokes the centrality and flexibility of fire in Aboriginal thinking, because totems assume that people and animals have power to make pivotal decisions about the environment, and that ritual plus burning or not burning implements those decisions. This sensibly assumes country laid out to empower totems and enforce the template system, for in every place the Law decreed which template and totem had priority.
Siting templates was not simple. Templates for plants might divert and disperse animals; templates for animals must be away from crops (ch 10): there was no point in having a crop eaten, or in luring animals to places people regularly disturbed. Patches to clear tracks or margins or protect cultural sites might still make pick, so had to be blended in. Even then a patch alone rarely supports any animal. Some use it, some its edges, some move from patch to patch, some stay between. Patches too many or too few let game scatter, too small made it flighty, too big put feed too far from shelter or spear. What was not burnt mattered as much as what was. These problems were met by connecting unlike templates, and by leaving some templates dormant while others were active, so that none detracted from another’s working. Mobility made this possible: people walked not only to care for country, but to leave it alone. A plain left after a hunt or a harvest soon became too rank for grazers, allowing its use, as distinct from its existence, to be rotated in concert with others suitably spaced.
Coasts were carefully made. Recall Cook’s ‘lawns’ (ch 1). A similar pattern circled most of Tasmania, edged inland by forest with clearings up to the highlands, where grass, heath, eucalypts and rainforest alternated (picture 37). On the Vasse near Busselton (WA) Nicholas Baudin described a coast common in 1788. Inside coastal dunes the land was
completely covered with scrub and stubby trees of various kinds. Next, one finds a plain, about a short quarter-league [1 km] in extent, ending at the edge of an immense forest that offers a most pleasant view . . . The plain just mentioned is scattered throughout with full-grown trees . . . There were so many traces of fire everywhere and the paths were so well-worn, that it looked to me as if this place were much frequented . . . As we crossed the plain, we encountered a fairly large number of quail.3
At Rockingham Bay (Qld) the doomed explorer Edward Kennedy saw ‘open ground between the beach and the swamp var[ying] in width from half a mile to three or four miles; it was principally covered with long grass, with a belt of bushy land along the edge of the beach . . . There were a great many wallabies near the beach.’4
In 1846 GD Smythe and in 1847 Robert Hoddle surveyed the Cape Otway (Vic) coast. It is climax rainforest country, but Smythe’s plan showed ‘Undulating Grassy Hills Timbered with She-Oak’ backed inland by ‘Undulating Heathy Hills’, then by ‘Red & Blue Gum, Iron Bark, Stringy Bark & Lightwood’. Hoddle’s plan showed coastal ‘Open Plains’ ‘Good Grass’ ‘Good Grass She Oak Timber’, and inland ‘Heath’ then ‘Thick Forest’. From the coast inland, the surveyors mapped a fire sequence of diminishing frequency. Two hot fires within seven years eradicates Drooping Sheoak, the Cape Otway species. Seeds grow, but need 5–7 years to seed in turn, and 10–12 years to seed well. Cool fire kills seedlings and spares mature trees but won’t provoke seed release. No fire lets seedlings become dense whipstick forest. The Otway sheoaks were neither too dense to impede good grass nor too sparse to warrant mention. The land was managed by finely balanced fires, yet was on a coast where for half the year people lived on fish and shellfish. By 1849 it was reverting to scrub. In April 1846 Charles La Trobe took three days to walk 75 kilometres or so from Cape Otway to Gellibrand River. In March 1849 he took five days, and needed ‘a good deal of exertion, a great deal more indeed than on my first excursion, for it was found quite impossible to follow my old track’. Within three years a complex landscape was vanishing.5
Elsewhere people refined country without much changing its character. On western Victoria’s ‘very extensive plains, with here and there a tree upon them’, William Buckley, veteran clansman, recalled, ‘we remained many months, there being plenty of animal food and a great deal of fish in the water holes’,6 and Hoddle ‘travelled 16 miles upon Plains destitute of Wood & Water . . . and encamped upon a bleak Plain, a few Banksias about a mile distant . . . not a single Tree for the last 12 miles. Abundance of Bustard, the native Turkey of Australia . . . Abundanc
e of Ducks on the Lakes.’7 People may have used big plains to deny kangaroos shelter and farm murnong, Yam Daisy, the flavoursome yellow-flowered tuber once common in southeast Australia (ch 10). Roos eat yam tops, so were not welcome on the fields, and yams were on big plains. On ‘large plains’ near Crystal Brook (SA), Eyre ‘came suddenly upon a small party of natives engaged in digging yams of which the plains were full’.8 North of the Hutt (WA) in 1839, Grey followed unlike templates keeping animals and food plants apart. He took a path through alternating scrub and plain to a well ‘surrounded by shrubs and graceful wattle trees’, then over ‘sandy downs, abounding in kangaroos’, and past ‘springs of water at every few hundred yards, generally situated at the edge of a large clump of trees’. This was kangaroo country, but soon it ended. Quitting the path, Grey met ‘an almost impenetrable belt of scrub . . . in two hours and a half I had forced my way throw [sic] it . . . we were all totally exhausted, as well as dreadfully torn and bruised’. He rejoined the path, and
my wonder augmented; the path increased in breadth and in its beaten appearance, whilst along the side of it we found frequent wells . . . We now crossed the dry bed of a stream, and from that emerged upon a tract of light fertile soil, quite overrun with warran [yam] . . . After crossing a low limestone-range, we came down upon another equally fertile warran ground . . . about two miles further on . . . we found ourselves in a grassy valley . . . Along its centre lay a chain of reedy fresh water swamps, and native paths ran in from all quarters . . . In these swamps we first found the yun-jid, or flag (a species of typha).9
Neither Grey nor Eyre or Mitchell in murnong country10 mentioned kangaroos with yams, even though yams and grass both grow best on rich soil.
