by Bill Gammage
About 350 metres from the cove, just where it was easiest to maintain such lush vegetation, it gave way to a gum grove and a camp. Newcomers recorded the cove’s name as Warrang, from ngurrung, camp, and found scatters of stone tools and chips at Angel Place, off Pitt Street.1 ‘Along shore was all bushes’, Jacob Nagle wrote, ‘but a small distance at the head of the cove was level, and large trees but scattering, and no under wood worth mentioning, and a run of fresh water.’ The grove was burnt more often than up the creek, perhaps in late winter for it was a summer camp, close to fish when the harbour water was warm.2
From the head of the cove, mud flats grew mangroves until rocks blocked their advance, then gave way east to saltpans and thin sand beaches until more rocks at Bennelong Point, and west to sand beaches, rocks, and a small creek. The sea bed shelved steeply, letting ships close inshore. As well as ‘Wild Spinage, Samphire & other leaves of Bushes which we used as Vegetables’, the cove sheltered fish, prawns, mangrove crabs, lobsters, mussels and rock oysters. In the clean water the rock oysters were famed before and after 1788. ‘All the rocks near the water are thick cover’d with oysters . . .’, Arthur Bowes Smyth wrote two days after arriving, ‘very small but very finely flavour’d; they also adhere to the branches of the mangrove trees’.3 William Bradley thought the oysters ‘very large’.4
Sydney is often described as thickly timbered in 1788, and superficially it was: a ‘very thick wood’, ‘very considerable in size, and grows to a great height before it puts out any branches’, a sure sign of close growth. But this description misses the subtleties of its management. At Sydney ‘the trees stood more apart, and were less incumbered with underwood than in many other places’.5 This was most obvious east of the creek, where the ground rose with no or little undergrowth and big fire-scarred trees to a crest along Macquarie Street. On this slope the senior officers settled themselves and the women convicts, and it remains a government centre. West of the creek was land steep and scrubby, burnt less often but more intensely, probably in summer. The marines, male convicts and at a distance the hospital were put on its lower slopes. It became the Rocks, Sydney’s sea-trade hub, and remains a commercial centre. Thus the Sydney families broadly shaped the city that displaced them.
Among the trees were clearings with fire ash: ‘here & there a small space of Clear Ground where the soil in General is a Black Mould Mixd with sand’. Phillip described
the close and perplexed growing of the trees, interrupted now and then by barren spots, bare rocks, or spaces overgrown with weeds, flowers, flowering shrubs, or underwood, scattered and intermingled in the most promiscuous manner . . . tents . . . are pitched, or huts . . . erected . . . wherever chance presents a spot tolerably free from obstacles, or more easily cleared than the rest.6
Maps locating those tents and huts imply where ‘tolerably free’ spots were, even though the newcomers began clearing as soon as they landed. The land at the creek mouth included clearings, and the newcomers at once took them over, including for gardens. At Bennelong Point the tree ‘scattering’ was enough to make a ‘little pasturage’, and three days after the newcomers swarmed ashore they put their stock there, and named it Cattle Point.7
Dense unbroken forest would have kept kangaroos away, but they were there. ‘A herd of 11 Kangaroos were this day started near the Camp’, Smyth wrote on 15 February, and in May Phillip reported, ‘Kangaroos were frequently seen, but very shy, and it is a little extraordinary that more of these animals are seen near the camp than in any other part of the country, notwithstanding they are fired at almost daily.’8 They had few places to go: grass kept most of them by the Kangaroo Ground, ‘a narrow strip’ from Leichhardt–Petersham across the watershed between Port Jackson and Botany Bay near Sydney University. David Collins thought its soil ‘much better for agriculture’ than at Sydney; Tench thought it better than anywhere between Broken Bay and Botany Bay. Good soil meant grass, and grass meant fire.9
Fire did more. Ralph Clark found not ‘one tree out of fifty but what is burnt’—‘with the lightning’ he added, forgivably.10 Phillip reported in 1790, ‘My intentions of turning the swine into the woods to breed have been prevented by the natives so frequently setting fire to the country.’11 Others reported many fires, but almost none were big, almost all burnt patches, none threatened. On North Head in early winter George Worgan saw
a great Fire; we found it to be the burning of a Heathy brush-wood, which we supposed the Natives had set on Fire for some Purpose, but what, we could not Conjecture. We observed likewise, Fires of this Nature, in several other Parts of the Country . . . whenever the Wind blows strong, there are a Number of these kinds of Fires about the Country.12
Heath needs 6–8 years to recover, so was burnt no more than once a decade. Fires to clear undergrowth were lit every 2–4 years on good soil, less often on sandstone. Fires to promote undergrowth were lit perhaps once a decade plus rare clean-up fires, depending on the soil and the plants. On Brickfield Hill, for example, where ‘trees of an immense size’ with ‘lofty and wide spreading Branches’ (flagging that fire had opened them) stood over ‘underwood . . . mostly of flowering shrubs’.13 People managed very locally, even burning single trees.14 No newcomer reported the big killer fires typifying Sydney’s margins today.15
East, in Farm Cove, trees stood ‘at a considerable distance from each other’.16 Phillip began a farm there: the Botanic Gardens displays the site. Below it, about today’s ponds, people held Kangaroo and Dog dances.17 Was Sydney Cove a rest camp for Farm Cove ceremonies? Towards the Heads the land was burnt much as at Sydney. The first impression was of big trees. ‘The necks of land that form the coves are mostly covered with timber, yet so rocky that it is not easy to comprehend how the trees could have found sufficient nourishment to bring them to so considerable a magnitude.’18 Yet there were many clearings, ‘many spots of tolerably good land, but they are in general of but small extent’.19 On 26 January Smyth rejoiced,
To describe the beautiful and novel appearance of the different coves and islands as we sail’d up is a task I shall not undertake . . . Suffice it to say that the finest terras’s, lawns, and grottos, with distinct plantations of the tallest and most stately trees I ever saw in any nobleman’s grounds in England, cannot excel in beauty those w’h nature now presented to our view.20
Worgan thought Port Jackson
suggests to the Imagination Ideas of luxuriant Vegetation and rural Scenery, consisting of gentle risings & Depressions, beautifully clothed with [a] variety of Verdures of Evergreens, forming dense Thickets, & lofty Trees appearing above these again, and now & then a pleasant checquered Glade opens to your View . . . [or] a soft vivid-green, shady Lawn attracts your Eye.21
In 1790 Daniel Southwell wrote that the ‘ground for a good space’ about Watson’s Bay ‘is unusually clear, with here and there a shrub, and at a dist. in passing looks like a pleasant lawn’.22 Lycett’s View of the Heads (c1821) shows ‘lawns’ on the harbour side at Watson’s Bay and the coast side near The Gap, split by dense forest or scrub. Above Parsley Bay, von Guerard’s Sydney Heads (1859–66) depicts a steep grass slope and a grass neck ringed by scrub—a kangaroo trap. Seaward, Camp Cove carried grass trees. They need fire to flower.
‘Between Sydney Cove and Botany Bay, the first space is occupied by a wood, in some parts a mile and a half, in others three miles across; beyond that, is a kind of heath, poor, sandy, and full of swamps.’23 ‘[S]ome parts appear’d barren, others pleasant Downes . . . [one had] a remarkable clump of trees on it; The land over the sandy bays is in general woody, as is a very considerable part of the higher lands.’24 Perhaps Worgan had this district in mind when he told his brother,
Though we meet with, in many parts, a fine Black Soil, luxuriantly covered with Grass & the Trees have 30 or 40 Yards distance from each other, so as to resemble Meadow Land, yet these Spots are frequently interrupted in their extent by either a rocky, or a sandy, or a Swampy Surface, crowded with large Trees, and
almost impenetrable from Brushwood which, being the Case, it will necessarily require much Time and Labour to cultivate any considerable Space of Land together.25
At Botany Bay the ‘Shore all round is like a thick Wood & the Soil very Sandy, the Grass in most places is about 2 feet high but not thick here & There is spots of underwood The Trees are in General about 20 Yards Distance from each other.’26
West from Sydney Cove, the scrubby nature of the Rocks continued past Balmain, which was ‘covered with a dense tea-tree scrub, through which some gum-trees straggled . . . The shores were rough and rocky, and the rocks were covered with brambles and native currants.’27 About Drummoyne the land opened: ‘the sides of this Arm are formed by gentle Slopes, which are green to the Water’s edge. The Trees are small and grow almost in regular Rows, so that, together with the Evenness of the Land for a considerable Extent, it resembles a Beautiful Park . . . the Soil was extremely rich, &produced luxuriant grass.’28
Further west and along the coast north were more parks. Phillip followed a ‘much frequented’ path from Manly to Pittwater, and ‘found many hundreds of acres of land, free from timber, and very fit for cultivation’.29 Hunter found
a very considerable extent of tolerable land, and which may be cultivated without waiting for its being cleared of wood; for the trees stand very wide of each other, and have no underwood: in short, the woods on the spot I am speaking of resemble a deer park, as much as if they had been intended for such a purpose.
Which they had, though dormant when Hunter passed: ‘The grass upon it is about three feet high, very close and thick.’30
At the head of the harbour was Rose Hill, later Parramatta. Its parrots were called ‘Rose Hillers’, hence rosellas. They kept to Rose Hill’s seed grasses, so were not at Sydney, habitat for scrub or heath birds like cockatoos and Turquoise and Ground Parrots.31 Peron mentioned Rose Hill’s ‘large spaces between the trees, which is covered by a very fine and sweet-scented grass, that forms a beautiful verdant carpet’,32 and Bradley wrote,
Towards the upper part of Port Jackson the Country opens & is covered with long grass growing under the trees, there are some spots of clear ground round P Jackson but none of considerable extent until near the head of it, from which, along by the flats & creeks it improves & near the fresh water at the top of the creek it is a fine open Country & good soil.
These were templates, ‘open ground where the Kanguroo frequent’,33 with good soil and grass, water, spaced trees and little undergrowth.34
Open country continued west ‘about twenty miles . . . but in a north and south direction it does not extend more than three or four miles, when you come again into barren, rocky land’.35 Phillip probed west in April 1788, strayed offline into thick scrub, went back and started again. He followed a scrub-fringed creek, then broke into grass with many paths, ‘in general entirely free from underwood, which was confined to the stony and barren spots’—grass on good soil, scrub on bad. He followed this ‘beautiful’ country to Prospect Hill, which ‘might be cultivated with ease’. It already was, for yams and grass: it was Cannemegal (‘fire people’) country.36 ‘In all the country thro’ which I have passed’, Phillip noted, ‘I have seldom gone a quarter of a mile without seeing trees which appear to have been destroyed by fire.’37 Worgan noticed:
in our Excursions Inland . . . we have met with a great Extent of Park-like Country and the Trees of a moderate Size at a moderate Distance from each other, the Soil, apparently, fitted to produce any kind of Grain, and clothed with extraordinarily luxuriant Grass . . . It is something singular, that all, of this kind of Trees, and many others, appear to have been partly burnt, the Bark of them being like Charcoal.38
A road soon ran from Sydney past Parramatta to Prospect Hill and north to the Hawkesbury. Elizabeth Macarthur took it in 1795,
through an uninterrupted wood, with the exception of the village of Toongabie . . . which we distinguish by the name of Greenlands, on account of the fine grass and there being few trees compared with the other parts of the country, which is occasionally brushy and more or less covered with underwood. The greater part of the country is like an English park, and the trees give to it the appearance of a wilderness, or shrubbery commonly attached to the houses of people of fortune, filled with a variety of native plants, placed in a wild, irregular manner.39
The Hawkesbury had rich swamps, and ‘abounded’ in swans, ducks, quail, small birds40 and yams. Yams signalled open, tilled ground. Colonists took it for small farms (ch 4).41
Port Jackson had many resources. Of food alone, settlers named kangaroo, emu, possum, glider, echidna, goanna, swan, duck, parrot, fruit, berries and ‘fern and another root’, ‘all of which are in abundance’.42 This missed much of what harbour families ate, even on land, yet they were water people. They ‘depend for food on the few fruits they gather; the roots they dig up in the swamps; and the fish they pick up along the shore, or contrive to strike from their canoes with spears’, Tench observed. ‘Fishing, indeed, seems to engross nearly the whole of their time, probably from its forming the chief part of [their] subsistence.’43 The harbour was
Tolerably well stocked with fish some of them Very Good. The Natives . . . do not seem to live in Community, but by separate familys in Caves & Hollows of the Rocks & As far as we know live only on fish & the Root of the Fern which Grows here in Plenty—they dive for fish & Oysters with Great Dexterity.44
Each family, perhaps one or two to a cove, shared its land and water, with clan help for big works and ceremonies.
Coves seem designed to offer a seafood specialty each. Some families or clans took their name from this (burramatta eel, wallumede snapper, cadi reed spear), together mapping a connected complex of resources. East, the head of Farm Cove had mangroves, Woolloomooloo and Elizabeth Bays deep water for fish, rays and sharks, Rushcutter’s Bay reeds for fish, crabs, prawns, shellfish, waterbirds and eggs. West, Cockle Bay’s shell heaps were so big that the newcomers burnt them for lime. Balmain’s bays were home to the Balmain Bug, still a delicacy. West to Homebush and Parramatta tidal mangrove flats gave way to clear, spear-fishing water. The north shore was similarly diverse: oysters in Middle Harbour, crabs at The Spit, water clear to the bottom.45
Across this clear water the strangers came. On 22 January 1788, while their ships waited in Botany Bay, the first of them rowed in, sea birds seeking to settle. They chose Warrang, the cove with the best water.
We got into Port Jackson early in the afternoon, and had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security . . . The different coves were examined with all possible expedition. I fixed on the one that had the best spring of water, and in which the ships can anchor so close to the shore that at a very small expence quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload. This cove . . . I honoured with the name Sydney.46
They reported no people, but at Manly a ‘party of natives’ had appeared. Cautious but fearless, and ‘very vociferous’, they accepted the offerings every visitor should make.47 They had not yet heard from Botany Bay, where these same intruders had begun plundering as soon as they landed, and were already unwelcome. There the ‘Natives were well pleas’d with our People until they began clearing the Ground at which they were displeased & wanted them to be gone’, Bradley wrote, and Worgan remarked that they ‘expressed a little Anger at seeing us cut down the Trees, but it was only by jabbering very fast & loud’.48 His contempt was ominous.
The First Fleet was a great achievement. In 257 days six convict transports, three store ships and two warships carried 1057 people, 44 sheep, 32 pigs, seven horses, six cattle, dogs, cats, poultry and Australia’s first houseflies, all unwanted, across half the globe. No other nation could have done it. Few had the ships, none the stores. The Royal Navy victualled the Fleet not only for the voyage, but for a year after. This matched landing a man on the moon, and it seemed something like it to the people of 1788. Som
e of them stored, but their mobility meant that none depended on it. Now came people who combined mobility and storing. It was a lethal combination.
Hobart, 20 February 1804
Even from the sea, the land approaching Hobart advertised how carefully it was made. To Abel Tasman in 1642, it was ‘widely provided with trees, which stand so, that men may pass through everywhere, and see far from them . . . unimpeded from thick dense forest or thicket’.49 In the Derwent estuary David Collins noted,
All the hills are very thinly set with light timber, chiefly short she oaks; but are admirably covered with thick nutritious grass, in general free from brush or patches of shrubs. The soil in which it grows is a black vegetable mould, deep only in the valleys, frequently very shallow, with occasionally a small mixture of sand or small stones. The shore on the east side of the river, proceeding up, is covered with a good but shallow soil, and lightly wooded.50
Around Mt Rumney Flinders marked ‘Pasturage’ in 1799, and in 1836 Darwin described the mountains as ‘covered with a light wood’.51 Hobart’s forests today are not ‘thinly set’.
Bligh saw how the woods were made. ‘The country looked in all parts pleasant and covered with wood. We saw numerous fires as if the country was fuller of inhabitants than has hitherto been supposed, and particularly about the shore of the Table Mountain [Mt Wellington] . . . certainly the finest part of the country.’52 This was February, high summer and the month of Hobart’s most terrible fires in 1967, yet Bligh saw no conflagration but ‘numerous fires’. Peron watched astonished a
