The Biggest Estate on Earth

by Bill Gammage

  multiplicity of fires . . . In every direction immense columns of flame and smoke arose; all the opposite sides of the mountains . . . were burning for an extent of several leagues. Thus were destroyed these ancient and venerable forests, which the scythe of time had respected throughout the course of so many centuries, only to fall a sacrifice to the destructive instinct of their ferocious inhabitants.53

  We know too well now that hot fires link up, yet Peron reported not one fire but many, and of course the forests were not destroyed. People burnt into March, until valley and hill were ‘much burnt’,54 but they did not fear the flames, as we do.

  Storm Bay guards the Derwent, and storms pushed port-seekers to its head. On 12 September 1803 they came to Risdon Cove. Collins wrote,

  The land at the head of Risdon creek, on the east side, seems preferable to any other on the banks of the Derwent. The creek runs winding between two steep hills, and ends in a chain of ponds that extends into a fertile valley of great beauty. For half a mile above the head of the creek, the valley is contracted and narrow; but the soil is extremely rich, and the fields are well covered with grass. Beyond this it suddenly expands, and becomes broad and flat at the bottom, whence arise long grassy slopes, that by a gentle but increasing ascent continue to mount the hills on each side, until they are hidden from the view by the woods of large timber which overhang their summits. With this handsome disposition of the ground, the valley extends several miles to the SE in the figure of a small segment of a circle. The tops of its hills, though stony, produce abundance of tall timber, which, as it descends the slopes, diminishes in size, and thins off to a few scattered she oaks and gum trees, interspersed with small coppices of the beautiful flowering fern. The soil along the bottom, and to some distance up the slopes, is a rich vegetable mould, apparently hardened by a small mixture of clay, which grows a large quantity of thick, juicy grass, and some few patches of close underwood.55

  Grass on good valley soil, timber on crests younger as it descends, ferns and flowers amid fire-prone trees. This was a template. The creek mouth was a swamp in a grassy flat, sheltering birds, eggs, reeds, roots, tubers and wallaby. A steep slope edged it, mostly timbered, but towards the creek a narrow grass strip led up to a flattish plateau. On the creek side the plateau fell to a half-basin of about 30 acres which sat like a giant armchair above a steep cliff. People could trap wallaby against the cliff, or spear them from the plateau’s timber edge, or drive them down into the armchair and over the cliff to hunters below, then run round to join the kill. Perhaps they were doing this on that day in May 1804 when the British saw them running down, and shot many. Edward White, the most reliable witness to the killings, was on the plateau when he saw ‘300 natives, men, women and children, coming down the valley in a circular, or, rather, a semi-circular form, with a flock of kangaroo between them. They had no spears, but were armed with waddies only, and were driving the kangaroo.’5657

  In February 1804 the British moved down to Sullivan’s Cove, for fresh water, a port, and a secure convict camp on Hunter Island.58 From Mt Wellington a creek ran into the cove, in ‘many places . . . dammed back, and spread out into marshes covered with rushes and water’, and reaching the cove through ‘a dense tangle of tea-tree scrub and fallen logs, surmounted by huge gum trees’.59 The dams may have been deliberate. The scrub was denser than along the Tank Stream, but off the creek soon met grassy forest.

  Behind a sandy beach south of the creek, samphire flats rose slightly to a ‘plain extensive’ with grassy forest and little or no undergrowth,60 the land ‘good and the trees very excellent . . . well calculated in every degree for a settlement’.61 Convicts were put on the flats and Hunter Island, soon Hobart’s commercial district. As at Sydney the officers chose the commanding slope southwest, still a government and cultural centre. Open forest rose to Mt Wellington. ‘The Land here is good in some patches of no great extent’, Meehan stated, ‘Is Gently rising to a ridge of hills . . . There is a good Quantity of good pasturage on the sides of these hills.’62 Near the ‘high Platform Mountain’, Peron remarked, the ‘forests . . . are much less dense than in the Channel itself, and moreover they appeared to have been devastated by fire’.63 The forest thickened higher up: amid dense underwood, giant eucalypts were ‘all streight [sic] and not branched out till near the top’.64 George Harris noted the change:

  The Shores rise gradually into hills covered with fine Grass & noble Trees . . . The Town is built on a fine gently rising plain, on the back of which are a succession of hills rising until they are terminated by Table Mountain . . . The hills & sides of Table Mountain are covered with immense Trees . . . some . . . of an incredible size.65

  One was 44 feet round breast high, another 70 feet. They had welcomed centuries of fire, yet amid them were rainforest patches and wet gullies of Sassafras, tree fern and vine. No conflagrations sheet-burnt Mt Wellington.66

  Upriver, grass plains lay in open forest, as at Sydney. King George’s Plains at Glenorchy, ‘very fine’, the nearest to the Mount about 300 acres, tracked the Derwent north.67 Near New Norfolk ‘the country formed a series of downs, in general so thinly sprinkled with trees, that it resembled a noble park, in which one would hardly wish to fell a tree, save an occasional unsightly Eucalyptus: the Acacias, too, were in full flower, and the fragrance exhaled by them was delicious’.68 Then came ‘Gentle hills almost bare of Trees & the Vallies narrow & Covered with Trees’.69 Macquarie Plains were extensive with abundant kangaroos, emus and pigeons, and ‘not more Timber than would adorn a Park anywhere’.70 Lycett’s The Table Mountain from the end of Jericho Plains (c1820) shows a plain scattered with trees and ringed by forest, just as James Ross described it.71 ‘In the borders of all these Plains’, Lycett remarked, ‘Kangaroos and Emus are numerous . . . The Bush abounds with Parrots, Paroquets, Cockatoos, and Pigeons and Wild Ducks frequent the Ponds and Rivulets.’72

  The estuary’s east side was similarly patterned. Near its head were ‘extensive plains interspersed with Gentle Grassy Hills . . . Very good pasturage’, and ‘fifty thousand Swans in a flock’.73 At Herdsman’s Cove, aptly named, the ‘Banks are more like a Nobleman’s Park in England than an uncultivated country; every part is beautifully Green and very little trouble might clear every Valley I have seen in a Month . . . in many places the plough might be used immediately.’74 Edging this cove, Green Point was grass, possibly a kangaroo trap. Towards Risdon the land was ‘unusually thin of timber’, with ‘grassy hills’.75 East, near Buckland, the hills were ‘mostly of a Beautiful verdure with some patches nearly clear of Timber’.76 On Kangaroo Point at Bellerive, grass–forest edges on good soil near the water lay below denser timber on higher ground sometimes open, sometimes scrubby. Middens and shell piles fringed the estuary.

  Eleven thousand years of water separated Sydney from Hobart, but their patterns were alike. At Hobart as at Sydney much land was unnaturally open, the ‘most beautiful & romantic Country I ever beheld . . .’, Harris told his mother,

  plenty of fresh water & immense forests of astonishing large trees fit for every purpose . . . The Woods abound with Kangaroos and Emus . . . Duck & Teal are in great plenty and Swans in such astonishing Numbers, that a Boat has taken 150 in a Day by running them down.77

  ‘We no sooner doubled the point formed by the great hill’, Peron wrote off Sandy Bay, ‘than we observed a prodigious number of black swans—the river was in fact covered with them.’78 Had it not been so, had it not been so well managed, had there been no templates, the invaders might not have come.

  Brisbane, May 1825

  Like most 1788 rivers, the Brisbane was fordable in places, letting people manage both sides as one. It paraded a profusion of plants. From its mouth in Moreton Bay, the south bank was ‘covered with thick Vine and Mangrove scrubs, the banks steep and muddy of alluvial soil, the land a little distance from the river is an open undulating well watered, and good country, with timber of all varietys’.79 Along the first reach this was broadly
true of the north bank, until about the golf course small salt creeks ran through a kilometre of scrub into tidal flats. Three small clearings lay in the scrub, which gave way east to a swamp, and north at the airport to part swampy, part open land, probably flood prone, but with three small tree clumps.80

  West, the scrub abruptly became ‘open forest’ of ironbark and gum extending north to where Kedron Brook spread into swamp, and west towards Breakfast Creek. About Albion Park Racecourse the forest stopped at a ‘lagoon’ flanked by ‘vine brush’ enclosing a grassy clearing, perhaps a place of significance. Allan Cunningham chanced on the spot: ‘Numerous were the beaten paths of the wild aborigine. His several fireplaces showed me that this part of the River was numerously inhabited.’81 Brush and lagoon then met a narrow eucalypt strip edging Breakfast Creek: Sandgate Road roughly follows its edge. Distinct fires associated these unlike neighbours. Breakfast Creek’s south bank was open forest of ‘tolerable pasturage’, broken by a small brush patch a kilometre or so upstream. Open forest then ringed a tea-tree and mangrove swamp filling the creek’s loop at Mayne. About Burrows Street a fish trap bridged the creek, and there and upstream the land was ‘fine open forest good pasture’. About where the creek becomes Enoggera Creek, alternate swamp, eucalypt forest, grass and brush patches flanked both banks. ‘Rich pasture’, Henry Wade wrote in 1844 of grass pockets in brush and swamp in now-gone meanders between Bowen and Normanby bridges.82

  From Enoggera Creek northeast to Nundah Creek and north to Kedron Brook the ‘ranges’ were not yet surveyed, but Nundah Creek was ‘in some parts very open &in others rather brushy. Near to the creek the soil is very superior.’ The brook threaded swamps and ‘good open forest land until the ridge at the back is met where it is a stoney grass tree country. The timber is various—Oak Gum and Stringy and Iron Bark with a good quantity of apple Tree and some honeysuckle. The bed of the creek is stoney and fish are found in it.’83

  Upriver from Breakfast Creek, ‘open undulating forest’ was varied by swamps, small creeks, grass patches and at Teneriffe a ‘barren stoney ridge’. Above it dense brush fringed the river, Hoop Pine topping a cascade of vines, Red Cedar, Silky Oak, Tulipwood, fig and other dry rainforest trees. The fringe continued past Story Bridge, while inland from Teneriffe a ‘timber’ belt with ‘good pasturage’ stretched to the bridge. Upstream, two long reaches circled a ridge 15–30 metres high, from which ran two small, reedy creeks or chains of ponds. Oxley remarked that the vicinity was ‘low land gradually rising’.84 ‘On the banks, Pine trees on both sides’, Edmund Lockyer noted in 1825, ‘The Indian Fig tree—blue gum, swamp oak, Iron bark, and occasionally thick brush.’ There were also edible yams.85 This ridge, with its mix of fire tolerant and fire sensitive plants and a swamp on the Botanic Gardens site, became Brisbane.

  From Milton up to Toowong was ‘a magnificent crescent’ of ‘principally open forest, not reaching far, beyond which it is clothed with pine brushes’.86 Next the banks became brush-lined with fine Hoop Pine, then right up to Goodna ‘alternately brushy or densely overhung with a matted or tressed mass of vegetation and the open Forest land, abundance of pine existing in the former’. Inland, from Brisbane to Mt Coot-tha, the land was hilly, sterile, and devoid of interest. On ascending the high ground, the soil and grass improve, and continue to do so till the very summit of the range, which is clothed with [trees] . . . The view from south-east to north-west was extensive and very grand, presenting an immense, thinly wooded plain, whose surface was gently undulated, and clothed with luxuriant grass.87

  Along the south bank opposite New Farm, brush traced the river and Norman’s Creek up to the Grammar School. Off-river west between hills, a ‘poor flat country’ of ‘open woodland’ ran to a ‘bold rocky ridge’ on the river above Kangaroo Point. ‘Poor stoney ranges’ dominated South Brisbane, but at Victoria Bridge the river could be waded, and newcomers caught bagfuls of fish by hand. Nearby were several ceremonial grounds: then as now South Bank was a cultural centre. Along Montague Road a creek parallel to the river was enclosed by a narrow strip of ‘rich scrubby land’ as far as Hill End, much like the Tank Stream and Hobart Rivulet. It

  was a tangled mass of trees, vines, flowering creepers, staghorns, elkhorns, towering scrub palms, giant ferns, and hundreds of other varieties of the fern family, beautiful and rare orchids, and the wild passion-flower, while along the river bank were the waterlily in thousands, and the convolvulus of gorgeous hue.

  It covered hill and flat, but was pocked by small clearings and, along a sharp boundary 300–500 metres from the river, gave way to country part open and part ‘rather heavily timbered’ with eucalypts and casuarinas.88

  Similarly varied country lay around Oxley Creek:

  a tract of land formed of alternate strips of Tea Tree . . . Swamp and Sandy Forest Land covered with Banksias . . . Forest Oak . . . and stunted Gums. The Creek having taken a sudden turn to the Eastward we were obliged to ascend a low range of Hills, having on our left, some beautiful flats of rich land. This range is formed of light sandy Soil but is covered with a good sward of grass. On it I observed an extensive Native encampment.89

  Upriver, Chelmer was ‘Rich Land’, Fig Tree Pocket ‘Rich Flats & Fine Timber’, Kenmore ‘GOOD open Grazing’.90 At Westlake Oxley climbed Green Hill and saw southwest ‘immense extended Plains, of low undulating hills and vales, well but not heavily wooded’.91 At Wacol–Moggill open plains backed the flats.

  Further up the land opened even more, as fire made grass king:

  The wood on the banks—fig-tree, blue gum, swamp oak, and ironbark, for the last half distance no pines, but here and there a solitary cedar. On landing, found spinach in great abundance, mint, parsley and the wild poppy . . . the country . . . delightful, thinly wooded, to a great extent fine pasturage . . . and only occasionally thick brush . . . very high grass of the oat species [Kangaroo Grass]; very few pines.

  Then came ‘hills beautifully covered with pine trees of a large size, the banks as before with swamp oak, honey-suckle, blue gum and ironbark . . . quite a park-like appearance . . . kangaroos in abundance’.92 At Bremer Creek,

  the change in the character of the Country is very apparent, the country on each side is of the richest description, thinly timbered, and abundantly watered, that on the left is formed of gentle declining flats . . . of the richest Black Loam, covered with an extraordinary Species of Angofera, and an unpublished species of Zanthorfea [Xanthorrhoea] which obtains the height of Twenty Feet, averaging not more than 15 trees to an acre.93

  Along the creek lay

  a large open country with scarcely any wood of consequence to impede cultivation upon it. The trees, chiefly blue gum, being at least an acre or more apart, and more ornamental than otherwise. The natives had lately set fire to the long grass, and the new grass was just above ground, making this plain appear like a bowling green; the soil rich beyond any idea . . . plenty of kangaroos and wild turkeys.94

  These were early summer fires to make grass, but rainforest (‘brush’) patches survived. Oxley mapped Bremer Creek up to Limestone Station (Ipswich) then north back to the river, noting alternate brush, open forest, dense forest and grass.95 Similar country lay upriver. At Fairneyview the land was ‘very good on both sides, soil good; walked up the hills, the country behind them having quite a park-like appearance . . . Kangaroos in abundance, but they were extremely shy’.96 Opposite Lockyer’s Creek an ‘extensive level forest country’ held ‘patches of brush’ and two plains by a swamp, with a belt of forest between.97

  Without fire most of Brisbane is naturally rainforest. ‘It looked as though some race of men had been here before us, and planted this veritable garden of Eden,’ one of the first convicts to see it recalled. ‘Skirting the water for miles on each side was dense vine-clad jungle, festooned with the blue and purple convolvulus, while on the tidal brink grew the beautiful salt-water lily—its flowers white as alabaster, its glorious perfume filling the air with fragrance.’98 Brush was espec
ially dense along water, but not only there, and not always there.

  People changed the country precisely and locally. Their sharp-edged fires put an immense diversity of plants and animals within easy reach of every family. They accepted brush on banks and alluvials, but threaded it with open forest and clearings. They accepted stony hills but made them grass or ‘barren’ forest. They welcomed swamps but alternated their edges with eucalypts, grass, and brush. They put grass patches in forest and tree clumps in open country. ‘The face of the country is very beautiful, consisting of green hills thinly wooded, interspersed with a flat country; also, thinly but fairly wooded; also, occasionally hills, with thick brush and pine trees,’ Lockyer reported.99 ‘The country in the vicinity of the Brisbane River . . . is variegated by brush land of exuberant richness, clear alluvial plains of the greatest fertility, and good grassy park-like forest land,’ Hodgkinson stated in 1841.100 The land was minutely made, integrated from family to family, planned to ensure abundance and maintain the Dreaming, patterned for beauty and variety.

  Oxley thought it so. He came on the river on 2 December 1823, followed it up, and along the first reach found scenery ‘peculiarly beautiful . . . the Soil of the finest description of Brush woodland, on which grew Timber of great magnitude . . . The Timber on the hills was also good.’ At Hamilton he noted ‘Rich Flats and Fine Timber’, and at Breakfast Creek ‘Fine open Grazing Country’. He named the river the Brisbane, and concluded, ‘I think a permanent Settlement would be more advantageously formed on the West Side of the River at the Termination of Sea Reach [Breakfast Creek]. The River here is not fresh, but there is plenty of water, the Country open.’101 The British were not seeking beauty and variety. They wanted a gaol, fresh water, and a port. They preferred the coast. They tested Amity Point on North Stradbroke, but in September 1824 chose Red Cliff Point. It was barely a port, it had little fresh water, and it was near two ceremonial grounds where intruders were resented. In May 1825 the newcomers moved up to Brisbane.102