by Bill Gammage
Wells and caches drove game onto free water including dams, reduced evaporation, and extended templates into dry country.82
Three template systems convey how universal the Australian estate was. Kangaroo Valley (NSW), both pivoted on water and blended into rough country above, showing distinct templates in continuum. Somerset on Cape York (picture 58) details what was done; Albany in southwest Australia (picture 57) when it was done, and by whom.
Kangaroo Valley
Hoddle surveyed Kangaroo Valley in August 1831. Kangaroo River’s south bank was ‘fine open forest’ and ‘open forest good soil brushy’ but no grassland, yet from the north bank the ground rose from grassy alluvial flats to sandstone cliffs with ‘grassy’ lower slopes and upper slopes of ‘very thick brush and rocks’. Barrengarry Creek, flanked by ‘undulating, grassy’ slopes, cut deep into cliffs. The plateau above was ‘rocky brushy range the soil of good quality’, ‘barren rocky range thick scrub’ and ‘barren scrub swampy’. Above Fitzroy Falls a ‘large reedy swamp’ edged a ‘very thick brushy range’ leading to another ‘large swamp’.83 Charles Throsby confirmed Hoddle’s survey: from ‘barren’ ridges the land fell to ‘a beautiful piece of Meadow, by the side of a considerable stream of water . . . land and grass very good’, but across the stream were trees and no meadows.84 Others, including Westmacott’s View in the Kangaroo Valley (c1840–6), also depict grass flats and lower slopes north, open forest but no grassland south, and dense scrub alternating with swamps on the plateau.85 Without fire this is climax rainforest country; some is rainforest now, including under giant eucalypts. The valley required at least four distinct fire regimes, but confined and located the plants and animals of almost every conceivable local habitat.
Somerset, July 1864
In 1864–5 surveyor WNB Wilson plotted Somerset and its hinterland. Somerset Bay ‘is formed by Points’, he wrote, ‘headlands rising abruptly from the extremities of a low sandy shelving Beach’ called Kai’hibi. About 400 metres long, half shut in by mangroves, it was backed first by grass, then by ‘Fig, the Coral Tree, the Cotton Tree [Red Kapok?], and . . . many new kinds of Tea Tree some of which measure six feet in diameter’. Behind rose sandy hills covered with ‘dense scrub’. On one, half open, half vine scrub, the Government Resident, John Jardine, put his house. Along the coast rainforest covered the lower slopes, but partway up the northwest headland Jardine’s barracks stood in a clearing, while open ground occupied the southeast headland’s upper slopes and crest, then fell to follow the coast south. Settlers put a ‘Pioneers Garden’ on this open coast, yet the slopes and ridges behind were ‘dense scrub’.
About 5 kilometres southwest were two lakes, Baronta (Bronto) and Weechoura (Wicheura), ‘beautiful sheets of deep and excellent water’. Except where swampy land linked them, both were ringed by grass, then ‘dense Tea-tree Scrub’. An open neck 200–800 metres wide extended 2 kilometres into the tea-tree, then split, one arm pushing a kilometre northwest into tea-tree, the other northeast up Polo Creek and onto a ‘barren swampy flat’. This was soon blocked by a joining creek and a narrow belt of dense scrub. Polo Creek was fringed by alternate dense scrub and open flats or slopes, backed by hills ‘more open’ to summits mostly dense scrub but sometimes open. Downstream, open land split by narrow necks of dense scrub ran up the hills behind the bay.86
Climax rainforest had been made an intricate mosaic of rainforest, open forest, swamp, creek, coast, tea-tree and grass. There were ‘many fruit bearing trees—the nonda [Nonda Plum]—and a tree bearing fruit as large as an apple [Lady Apple] many edible berries & a species of black grape’. Open runs channelled game onto water, up steep slopes, or into scrub-edged traps. Grass allowed camps on the beach and around the lakes with easy access to plant and animal foods in rainforest and scrub. Grass also carried bulbs: in December 1864 Wilson remarked,
heavy showers fell which had a wonderful effect upon the hitherto parched up ground innumerable bulbous roots shooting up their long green stems in every direction and clothing the earth with a profusion of flowers [Cape York Lily?] . . . It is very delightful to contemplate Nature in her holiday garbs, but unfortunately both the flowers and the coarse green grass are intrinsically worthless.
Wilson didn’t value anything much. He cursed the scrub, ‘composed of a sort of bastard tea tree—so dense that it is almost easier to walk over it than through it’. He thought the country south ‘the most totally barren spot in the whole district . . . It only required the absence of water to render it a complete Sahara . . . patches of coarse blady grass interlaced with interminable worthless scrubs.’ He missed seeing that the country had been made, even though across the water the face of Albany Island was a plant mosaic (picture 58), and at Somerset the ‘weeds and grass have all been burnt round the camp and every thing hopelessly covered with sand charcoal & ashes’.87 People burnt camp surrounds carefully to avoid damaging fruit and shade trees.88
Others described this country. It was
wooded in every direction, but with constantly recurring open patches covered with scattered acacias, gum trees, and Proteaceae with grass only growing beneath. In the dense woods, with their tall forest trees and tangled masses of creepers, one might for a moment imagine oneself back in Fiji or Api [Vanuatu], but the characteristic opens, with scattered Eucalypti, remind one at once that one is in Australia.89
Swamps were sometimes in brush, sometimes not, while high ridges southwest of the town were ‘tolerably well grassed, and crowded with dense vine-scrubs’, a striking contrast.90 Jardine described ridges
covered with a thick scrub, laced and woven together with a variety of vines and climbers; while the small valleys intervening bear a strong growth of tall grass, through which numerous creeping plants twine in all directions, some of them bearing beautiful flowers . . . The scrubs are formed with an immense variety of trees and shrubs . . . [some with tasty fruit, including a] wild banana, with small but good fruit.
Banana, yam, taro and several fruits and nuts cultivated in Malaysia and New Guinea are ‘wild’ on Cape York.91 People had freed them.
They were also sea people. The sea floor and its reefs, cays and sandbars were named, enriched with myth, portioned into ‘countries’, managed and inherited. Jardine listed green turtle as the ‘principal food’ during the Wet, also naming fish, shellfish, birds, roots and fruit.92 Understandably, even he did not fully grasp the rich diversity around him. He missed naming dugong, reptiles, pandanus, mangrove shoots, marsupials and more. Grass, forest and scrub each carried dozens of useful plants. In the sandy scrub behind his house grew the main food yam. People planted them in lots, poles marking boundaries, and harvested them without disturbing their tops. Some lots were reserved for guests. On the beach and at camps people planted coconuts and shade trees, sometimes fencing or clearing round them.93
By 1992 almost all the land open in 1865 was forest or scrub, and trees were edge-invading the ‘barren swampy flat’ and the open high ground on the coast.94 People visiting said, ‘Poor old country, come wild now. No-one look after him.’9596
Somerset Bay had little water. Ships called, then moved northwest to Evans Bay, which had wells behind the beach. In 1844–5 and 1848–9 officers on HMS Fly and HMS Rattlesnake wrote similar accounts of the land there. A narrow rainforest belt backing the beach gave way to grassy eucalypt woodland, then rocky hills ‘covered by an almost impenetrable thicket, forming a natural fence’ or ‘pleasant grassy flats’, ‘a likely place for kangaroo’. In October 1848 a ‘bush fire’ ‘passed over’, and flats which reached to a mangrove swamp full of fish were ‘covered with a stubble of coarse grass’. Seasonal freshwater pools dotted the plains, ringed by pandanus, tea-tree or rainforest, in November 1849 laden with Lady Apples, like an ‘orchard’—which it was. The plains ended in a jungle ‘cul-de-sac’ which ran up flanking hills. Across open flats south, luxuriant rainforest and ‘beautiful palms’ rich in pigeons and scrub turkeys edged a river. East, the Mew River’s upper re
aches carried luxuriant rainforest and ‘beautiful palms’, but lower down ‘grassy sloping meadows’ rose to ‘flanking ridges’ ‘covered with dense scrub occasionally extending in struggling patches down to the water, and forming a kind of imperfect natural fence’. Downriver lay ‘open forest land, or nearly level and thinly wooded country covered with tall coarse grass’. West to Cape York were ‘low wooded hills alternating with small valleys and plains of greater extent’, and behind the coast, ‘where the country is flat, there is usually a narrow belt of dense brush or jungle’.97
These templates ran right along Cape York’s east coast (pictures 44–5). Their managers knew what they were doing. Behind Evans Bay on 1 December 1849, ‘observing that the grass had been burnt on portions of the flats the Blacks said that the rain that was coming on would make the young grass spring up and that would bring down the kangaroos and the Blacks would spear them from the scrub’.98
Albany, 25 December 1826
At Somerset newcomers killed people;99 at Albany officials got to know an independent people better than anywhere in Australia, learning who could burn, and when.
The land was ‘low and beautifull covered with woods & frequent natural meadows’.100 South from King River was ‘a pretty extensive wood in wh I observd the largest trees I had seen . . . we enterd on an extensive plain . . . Having crossed this we again enterd a wood & crossing several swampy meadows we arrived . . . on the banks of a little lagoon or Pond [Lake Seppings?].’101 The Kalgan’s banks were ‘here and there bordered with extensive plains and meadows . . . a little way off . . . [was] a thick wood . . . without any underwood . . . We seldom met with these trees or the other gum plants anywhere about the Sound without observing their stems burnt or scorshed [sic] with fire.’102
Fire was universal: ‘we did not see a spot which had not . . . felt its effects’, but cool: ‘the largest of the trees had been burnt, though slightly’,103 and burnt ‘in consecutive portions’.104 People used fire to make grass, to ambush wallaby plunging from the smoke and, like central desert people, to ‘walk over the ashes in search of lizards and snakes’.105 They burnt mostly in summer (ch 6), ‘the fishing season’, when inland friends came to stay. In winter they went inland, implying that inlanders burnt then.106 This let both peoples exploit and rest their country in turn. In mid-winter 1828 people were
anxious we shd go to see a part of the Country by them called Mordellawa, lying N.N.W. about fifty Miles from us. They say that, after the third day’s march, we shall come to abundance of grass, the trees very large, great quantities of Kangaroo, Emu and Birds that, from their description, I take to be Bustards; we shall pass a river running to the Westward and also a lake . . . in the Summer time, ‘when water becomes scarse [sic]’ they [the inlanders] retire [there].107108
Country was allocated (ch 5). ‘Each tribe occupies a large and determinate tract, which is subdivided into smaller portions as hunting-grounds for individuals, who jealously watch over, and instantly retaliate encroachment upon their shares.’109 Backhouse was told,
in the Swan River Country, as well as at King Georges Sound, the Natives have their private property, clearly distinguished into hunting-grounds, the boundaries of which are definite, trees being often recognized by them as landmarks . . . possession rests in the head of a family. Several of these families residing in a district, form what the white people call a Tribe; but these tribes are not subject to any recognized chief, though a man of prowess will often gain great ascendancy among them.110
Nind observed,
the natives who live together have the exclusive right of fishing or hunting upon . . . [their] grounds, which are, in fact, divided into individual properties; the quantity of land owned by each individual being very considerable. Yet it is not so exclusively his, but others of his family have certain rights over it; so that it may be considered as partly belonging to the tribe. Thus all of them have a right to break down grass trees, kill bandicoots, lizards, and other animals, and dig up roots; but the presence of the owner of the ground is considered necessary when they fire the country for game.111
Barker reported,
Nakinah & several others asked for a boat to put them across to burn for Wallabi at Bald Head. He did not know the exact day as it depended on Coolbun’s arrival, whose ground it was, & their starting there without him would be considered stealing . . . They also required his presence or permission now to burn at King George, as since Dr Uredale’s death it had become his property. They might kill Wallabi but not burn for them. They were joking with each other on the consequences of having burnt for Wallabi yesterday on some of Maragnan’s Ground & talked laughingly of his spearing some of them for it. Females never possess ground . . . If a man dies without leaving sons, or males of his family, his next neighbours have his ground. Certain parts are often portioned out to sons as soon as they are born, but they do not enjoy possession until they are grown up & able to use it.112
The English settled in Nakinah’s country, an extensive estate, 6000 square kilometres by one estimate, which on his death passed by Law to Mokare. ‘Mokare and his brothers were often troubled by poachers’, WC Ferguson found,
Not that hunting wallaby was generally considered a violation of the owners’ rights. Other Aborigines, close neighbours and those linked by kinship, had some acknowledged rights on the estate, one of which was hunting wallaby. Problems arose, however, because wallaby hid in the dense thickets. This made them difficult to spear unless fire was used to drive them towards the hunters, and it was strictly forbidden to set fire to the bush without the participation or the express permission of the owner. When exuberant groups of hunters overlooked this restriction, heated exchanges of words or blows could follow. The family was very precise about what of the estate it wanted burned, and when.113114
At Albany and across Australia, Sylvia Hallam neatly reflects the importance of templates:
Aboriginal Australian people, through a long prehistory, used fire as a tool to create, conserve and exploit fine-grained habitat mosaics; thus increasing bio-diversity and developing a raised carrying capacity; allowing increased human numbers; leading to further diversified and intensified usage, in a positive feedback spiral; and/or to mechanisms of demographic restraint.115
This was not all, and not central in 1788. The land was no passive space, but the Dreaming’s timeless gift, wondrous bounty, and ageless duty. It was alive, giving, receiving, teaching, correcting, balancing. People loved its beauty, generosity and wisdom. Dalrymple wrote lyrically of country inland of Cardwell:
Passing through rather dense and lofty forest for about 6 miles, we entered a very beautiful tract of rich country, of limited extent, openly timbered ridges descending from the range into small rich plains and forest glades, intersected with many clear running stony streams, all joining a small rapid river (which I have named the Marlow), its banks clothed with dense lofty jungle, a mass of creeping vines, palms, &c. At the head of the valley, where it was surrounded by almost an amphitheatre of precipitous mountains, the river fell from the crest of the range in a fine cascade into the woodlands below. A broad, hard-beaten path of the blacks led us into this retreat, where small verdant plains, bounded and broken by clumps of vine, jungle, and fig-trees, varied by the fresh, bright green of groves or single trees of the wild banana, and the tall, graceful stems of the Seaforthia elegans [Solitaire] palm, half completed the delusion that we were entering one of the beautiful mountain villages of Ceylon or of the islands of the Pacific.116
No chance of Nature, no careless hand, no random fire, could make so rich a paradise.117
9
A capital tour
Until 1788 almost no-one in Australia imagined attack from the sea. Sea and shore belonged to the Dreaming, eternal eddies. Only in Sydney and Adelaide did any invader attempt to understand this or any aspect of 1788 life, but the land that newcomers took tells much about the people who made it, while fire and no fire patterned country in ways which infl
uenced where newcomers settled. In this way, sometimes slightly, sometimes clearly, the people of 1788 shaped the layout of Australia’s capital cities.
Capital sites had two primary needs: a port, and fresh water. It was an elusive combination. The need for water pushed all but Darwin onto streams slightly inland, like the great British ports. All these streams were shallow, some of them mere chains of ponds. They served not because their supply was good, but because it was worse elsewhere. This obliged all but Perth to reject earlier sites, and Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne to separate port and capital. Even so, every capital was soon pressed by want of water, and still is. All had swamps, springs, soaks and wetlands, but by ‘fresh’ newcomers meant ‘running’, for them and for their mills, tanneries, breweries and other improving enterprises. Few liked swamps, many despised them, none knew how to care for them. What people until 1788 prized most, the newcomers prized least. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes not, as soon as they landed they began to destroy.
Sydney, 26 January 1788
Below the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park a spring percolated through sandstone into a small marsh, then trickled west and north down a gully to a cove west of Bridge and Pitt streets. In flood it sprayed mud flats there, but usually it had only a small flow, and in drought it dried up. Newcomers called it the Tank Stream, because they cut a water tank in it. Fresh water was precious in this porous sandstone, and until 1788 people sheltered the creek with tiers of foliage, many with edible leaves, berries or fruit. Banksias and acacias below giant Scribbly Gum, Red Bloodwood or Sydney Red Gum gave an outer shield. Inside, orchids, lilies, herbs and a ‘fairy dell of wild flowers and ferns’ flourished beneath Cabbage and other palms and a damp-loving scrub of melaleuca, kunzea and leptospermum. Fire welcoming and fire sensitive plants grew together. Few fires came, but perhaps every 4–5 years careful cool burns, probably in winter, kept these unlikely companions side by side.
