by Bill Gammage
This park land is a pleasant scene, and has much the appearance of English parks, being adorned in many places by large native trees growing in clumps, and having the river passing through the grounds for some distance, with handsome trees lining its banks.208
Fire made the district’s templates. It kept grass dense and water-shielding, touched wetlands rarely but cleared undergrowth, and put trees in belts and clumps. In the city, ‘trees are very few and mostly damaged by fire’,209 but by March 1839, with fire banned, wattles were regenerating densely: it ‘was easy to lose oneself in the heavily wooded city even in the daytime and at night it was scarcely possible to avoid doing so. The maze-like character of the spot was greatly enhanced by a multitude of wattles, which occupied spaces between gum or she-oak trees.’210 This is rapid regeneration: perhaps this newcomer was on the city’s west, which people were not burning in 1836 because it was wirranendi, ‘being transformed into a forest’.211
Family groups worked fires, neighbours sometimes helping (ch 6). About 20–30 people managed a yerta, a range, divided into pangkarra, ‘a district or tract of country belonging to an individual, which he inherits from his father . . . As each pankarra has its peculiar name, many of the owners take that as their proper name, with the addition of the term burka.’ Pangkarra names might identify a dominant totem and template— red gum people, reed people, possum people; personal names might signify a right and a duty to say how a pangkarra should be managed, and declare an interest in the well-being of a totem and its habitat.212
Few newcomers imagined such discipline. Light thought the country ‘looked more like land in the possession of persons of property rather than that left to the course of nature alone’, and John Morphett considered it ‘very picturesque and generally well timbered, but in the disposition of the trees more like an English park than we would have imagined to be the character of untrodden wilds’.213 At Adelaide newcomers learnt more about its people than at any other state capital, yet could still think the careful construction around them ‘untrodden wilds’. For manager and spoiler alike, the loss was irrecoverable.214
Darwin, 5 February 1869
Port Darwin is ‘one of the finest harbours in the world, dotted here and there with wooded islands, small bays, and headlands tapering off into the sea, fringed in some places with mangroves, in others with hills and ravines covered with trees of the most beautiful and luxuriant foliage’.215 Here at last newcomers could put a port right on the coast, though most fresh water came from wells.
The port completed Britain’s strategic occupation of Australia. Since 1824 it had tried to establish a northern port west of 135 degrees longitude, the western limit of its 1788 claim.216 It garrisoned Melville Island in 1824, Raffles Bay in 1826 and Port Essington in 1838. All soon faltered, and none survived more than a dozen years. In 1864 Adelaide attempted a northern settlement at Escape Cliffs, which also failed, so in 1869 it mimicked its own foundation by sending a well-equipped expedition under its surveyor-general, George Goyder, to Port Darwin.
Goyder mapped a harbour mostly mangrove but with openings, and a coast varied by cliffs, rocks, vine forest, sheoak rimmed beaches and small grassy flats.217 Initially he reported
thickets of vegetation fringing the rocks of the coast and a few mangroves where the water is shoal, open forest of gum, iron and stringybark, cedar, banyan, and other trees . . . three varieties of palm (fan, corkscrew, and another with leaves resembling long feathers), an endless variety of shrubs, herbs, and grasses; the table land mostly of good rich soil, stony in places, as are the ridges.218
Later he described even more intricate plant patterns:
The cliffs, except at Point Emery and Point Elliot, where the land is more open, are fringed by a dense thicket from five to twenty yards through, of various sized timber, matted together by bamboo, convolvuli, and a variety of other vines and shrubs. The low lands near the sea . . . [are covered] by dense mangroves of two or three varieties; these give place as you go inland and ascend to the higher levels, to paper bark (some of large growth), palms, fan and fern, screw pines, iron bark, gum, stringy bark, fig, cedar, cotton, and a variety of other trees and shrubs forming an open forest. The grass over the whole, or nearly the whole of the surface of the ground, grows luxuriantly, from a rank species resembling holcus [Spear Grass] to the finer varieties.219
In short, the further inland the more often the land was burnt. Mangrove, fig, cedar, coastal ‘thickets’ and some palms were burnt rarely or never, sheoak perhaps every decade, grass and open forest in patches every 1–3 years.
Goyder chose a camp at the ‘best landing place’, a coastal flat below Fort Point at the harbour’s eastern tip.220 It had
most luxuriant vegetation—the hibiscus, grevillia, bamboo, ironbark etc giving a delightful shade—most beautiful varieties of convolvulus and hibiscus in bloom—the fan palms and corkscrew palms bending ever so gracefully and twined with creepers in flower to the top. The grass is very long, in some patches it is twelve feet high.221
Goyder had rocks and timber cleared, a well deepened in nearby Doctor’s Gully, and ‘tracks cleared from well to beach’.222 But the flat was too small, and he moved up to a gully on Fort Hill, levelled in 1965 to make Kitchener Drive. His men spilled onto the tableland, which became Palmerston, renamed Darwin in 1911. It was
fairly covered with timber & a variety of grasses—mostly coarse & rank—one better variety of which horses & stock are fond [Kangaroo Grass]—herbs abundant . . . several varieties of Eucalypti:— Acacia— pines—Screw & fan palms &c &c too many to name . . . intersected by small water-courses none of which have got water.223
Goyder’s surveyors described a more subtly varied town area. ‘Except in the Open flats’, the land ranged from ‘thickly’ to ‘thinly’ timbered, the ground was generally ‘well grassed’ but in places had ‘luxuriant undergrowth’, fire sensitive and fire tolerant palms each had a place, and creeks had mangroves on one bank but grass on the other.224
The newcomers’ interest was at first along the coast northeast. Larrakia people had many camps there, and Goyder’s men sank the Doctor’s Gully well by opening a spring, one of several that people had shielded with a ‘dense thicket’ of vine, ferns, palms and Green Plum.225 A thicket strip ran to Point Elliot, where the land opened as far as Point Emery, a big camp. In 1839 James Emery of HMS Beagle dug a deep well in a beachside gully just south of the point, and persuaded people to inspect it.
It was . . . some time before this party could be induced to look down the well. At length by stretching their spare bodies and necks to the utmost, they caught sight of the water in the bottom. The effect upon them was magical, and they stood at first as if electrified. At length their feelings gained vent, and from their lips proceeded an almost mad shout of delight.226
They had cause: the well was near a men’s ceremonial ground,227 where important creator ancestors came from the sea, as the well water seemed to.
From Point Emery, Fannie Bay’s palm and sheoak was backed by eucalypt-dominated woodland, perhaps thickest at East Point. This gave way to mangrove flats, then returned at Nightcliff to a shore lined by tall sheoak and split by a ‘strong’ freshwater creek amid ‘luxuriant vegetation’, including ‘native melon, & cape gooseberry’.228 Here were more camps and a tidal fish trap.229 Rocks led to Rapid Creek, then sheoak edged the great reach of Casuarina Beach to Lee Point. Behind it ran a familiar 1788 pattern: a 100–200 metre strip of ‘open grassed plain’ bounded inland by an ‘edge of timber’ (ch 7; picture 55), which merged with Marrara Swamp at the airport.230
Rapid Creek ran out of Marrara Swamp. Swampy near its mouth, inland it was lined with springs and shady trees fronting open forest, good campsites. East of Marrara an ‘open forest of ironbark gum stringy bark grevillea and several varieties of Palms’ stopped abruptly 60 metres short of Knuckeys Swamp, with ‘three varieties of Lillies’. Grass margins ringed it, perhaps marking high water in the Wet, then ironbark count
ry resumed.231 Southeast, a ‘small open plain’ lay in ‘ironbark, plum, cotton &c’ which reached to Packard’s Knob, just north of the university’s Palmerston campus. East of the Knob two open plains broke the forest, and south lay Elrundie Flat, where a surveying team set up camp and sunk a 2-metre well. The flat merged into a swampy plain now Marlow Lagoon. West and northwest was ‘Mostly gum forest, well grassed, with a variety of other timber, herbs, shrubs & grasses, honeysuckles & kangaroo grass’.232 Extensive mangroves along East Arm and Frances Bay led back below Marrara Swamp to the town.
Marrara’s southern reaches carried pandanus and ironbark until it met slightly higher ‘clear land’ falling south to Ilwaddy Flat, along Tiger Brennan Drive below the airport. The Flat was open stringybark and peppermint forest, swampy in the Wet, with ‘plum’ and ‘fern palm’ patches. Green Plum, rich in vitamin C, fruits best under carefully timed fire; fern palm may have been a cycad but seems more like Goyder’s palm ‘with leaves resembling long feathers’233—Darwin Palm, fire sensitive and now endangered. Ilwaddy Flat ran south to coastal mangroves and west to a ‘thickly timbered’ flat with ‘Fan palms & luxuriant undergrowth’ about where The Narrows separate Ludmilla and Sadgroves mangrove creeks. Southwest towards the town, ‘undulating country’, the valleys ‘exceedingly well grassed’, the ridges ‘rough and covered with the usual vegetation’, led to open forest dominated by stringybark, wattle and palms. Then ‘bare patches destitute of vegetation’ jostled with ‘Abundance of Kangaroo grass & other grasses’, while creeks edged by alternating mangroves and clear land led to wetlands with vine brush patches from the Botanic Gardens towards Mindil Beach. In the town area the timber became ‘taller thinner and closer together’, with grassy patches.234
There were many more plant species than Goyder’s surveyors noted. For example they never or rarely named bloodwood, cycads and yams, all certainly there. They mapped in the Dry: most of their flats became swamps in the Wet. But they describe typical Top End grassy forest interspersed with mangroves, wetlands, and vine forest patches. All were rich resources: 38 of the Territory’s 51 mangrove species grow around the harbour,235 and in clear spaces middens and shell mounds marked the feasts of centuries. Goyder mapped a mound in East Arm 4 metres high, and some middens were over 30 metres long.236
The land was locally managed. In 1885 a resident reported distinct boundaries between the Darwin people and their neighbours, and stated,
The land is subdivided among the several families, with territorial rights, and the ownership is a real one . . . on the Lammerru Beach . . . is the camp of the family in whom that part is vested. A half-mile distant, at the head of Smith and Cavenagh streets, is the main camp of the Larrakia, comprising several circles of wurleys.237
Families cared for their country, and co-operated with clansmen and neighbours to manage bigger areas. In general they worked with the country, over centuries extending the dominance of fire tolerant species and burning back vine forest. The burning was precise and selective, mosaic burning, deliberately distributing fire tolerant and fire sensitive templates. Most grass was burnt every Dry as it still is (ch 6), yet grass might be open or in woodland, or stop suddenly at ‘luxuriant’ undergrowth or fire sensitive vine thickets sheltering springs, particularly on the coast and the creeks. Grass on good valley soil alternated with timber on stony ridges; flats and swamps might have grass, forest or mangrove margins; clearings and small plains lay in eucalypts or mangroves. An annual Wet and Dry dictated means unlike those in southern and central Australia, but the ends were the same. The country was made, obeying the Law, associating unlike plant communities, and making resources abundant and convenient. Darwin was part of an Australian estate.238
Canberra, 12 March 1913 (1824)
Within months of finding Lake George (picture 51), Europeans reached the Canberra district. In December 1820 Charles Throsby Smith rode from the lake west then southeast to Gundaroo. Farm or forest now, then it was ‘a beautiful Clear plain . . . as far as the Eye could reach all round . . . a finest Country as ever was seen’. Smith continued south,
thro’ a fine forest country for 3 miles ascending a Stony Range . . . some beautiful clear plains in sight . . . Descended the Range & into a scrubby Country for about ½a Mile then into a most beautiful country gentle Hills and Valleys . . . Came on to one of the plains we saw at 11 o’clock—at ½ past 1 came to a very extensive plain Rich Soil and plenty of Grass—Came to a Beautiful River that was running through the plain in a SW direction.239
He was on the Molonglo, possibly upstream of the Queanbeyan junction, perhaps near a limestone outcrop at the National Museum.
In 1832–5 Robert Hoddle, soon to survey Melbourne, surveyed between Yass and Michelago, including Canberra and Queanbeyan. ‘Open plains’ and ‘fine open grassy forest’ without undergrowth were easily most common, and commonly alternated, sometimes with Hoddle dotting a line to mark their boundary. Kangaroo Grass and Blakely’s Red Gum, Ribbon Gum or Apple Box dominated, with Yellow Box on lighter soils, and wattle or casuarina in places. Hoddle marked no dense forest, not even on hills thickly forested now, and only two ‘scrubby’ places, one on hills south of Lake George, one east of Jerrabombera Creek towards Burra. Another scrub belt, possibly the scrub Smith passed through, bordered the northeast corner of the airport plain.240 Scrub undergrowth now typifies Australian Capital Territory bush.
Almost all watercourses were ‘chains of ponds’ with frequent fords and dry crossings. The biggest, the Murrumbidgee, was ‘a rapid stream with a Stony bed, difficult to ford in many places, with high rocky banks, and abounds with Fish and wild Fowl’. Its clear ‘pebbly’ bed was easily forded except after rain. The Queanbeyan River, Ginninderra Creek and Gooramon Ponds were ‘incomplete channels’, whim choosing their labels. The Molonglo was variously called a ‘rivulet’, ‘a Chain of connected Ponds’, and a ‘creek’ with ‘ponds’. In the 1829 winter it was ‘only running in some places, but consists of large Ponds’, in May 1833 and August 1835 it was dry and ‘difficult to trace its bed, only a Pond in intervals’. It was a typical inland watercourse, spreading shallowly around small islands, flooding readily into wetlands, with a scatter of reedy pools some more permanent than it, holding fish, eel, platypus and yabbies. On each side were grassy plains. Word spread: in 1820–4 at least six European parties inspected the district, and in 1824 the first landtaker’s huts stood on the Molonglo.241
One hut was near where Canberry (Sullivan’s) Creek joined the river. The creek rose in hills north and trickled shallow and swampy to Turner. Above Barry Drive it spread into a 300–400 metre wetland, narrowed to a small ‘spring’ or ‘pond’ at the Australian National University pond, then squeezed between high banks through a kilometre or so of ‘open plain’ backed by ‘grassy open forest’. The right (west) plain tapered to meet open forest at O’Connor Ridge, the forest continuing until the ground fell gently to a narrow reedy flat below Ursula College. The left bank opened to undulating grass plains with tree clumps on rises such as at Manning Clark Theatre, and to a tree-ringed plain towards Civic. The bank continued to a sharp-edged ‘grassy open forest’ belt. Its outer edge ran from Fellows Road Bridge roughly south to below University House. Its inner edge began on a gravelly rise lower down the creek, circled higher ground across several soil types towards the Menzies Library, then curved back to the creek, making an edge and a tree belt around a grass plain about 600 metres by 400, roughly today’s South Oval.
People burnt carefully to make this plain. It associated grass and water with shelter on an enclosing rise, which let people hunt easily. Naturally they usually kept away, harvesting perhaps once a patch-burn, but there were many such plains, each burnt in turn. Downstream the creek widened over a permanent spring, then threaded between ridges at Parkes Way onto grassy flats below Black Mountain spur, where at Springbank another spring never ran dry, and people camped. South Oval paddock was just over the ridge, many plants including Yam Daisy were at hand, and the �
�woody’ spur was good winter shelter from floods and cold flats. Stone tools and chips lie there. Black Mountain was open lower down, a little thicker higher up. The summit was clear, ‘a very high Hill from the Top of which we had an extensive View all round’. Today there are no views, and scrub and debris clog densely regenerating eucalypts, with few pre-1788 trees.242
Opposite Black Mountain a ‘pebbly ford’ spanned the Molonglo. East, the river divided Limestone Plains, ‘extensive plains and good grazing country on each side, with a considerable portion of rich meadow land on the banks of the rivers’.243 Swampy ‘alluvial flats’ with reed and lignum stretches backed by grassy downs suited emu, plains turkey, yams and native artichoke. North of the river this country continued across the city to below Russell Hill, where the river looped south around an ‘open plain’, now East Basin, and through rich reedy swamps, perhaps the district’s most extensive. Wetlands tracked the river up to Pialligo, where back from the north bank long sandy rises, excellent warm-weather camps, were littered with stone tools. Within a few hundred metres, closer than most supermarkets, swamp, river, plain, hill and forest were handy.
Most forest was on ridges. On Acton Ridge a sharp edge divided an ‘open forest’ crest from grass slopes below, except for a tree clump at the National Museum. Above Russell Hill ridges came close to the river: Mt Pleasant ‘covered slightly with gum trees’, from there to Mts Ainslie and Majura ‘Open Forest’ on a ‘Range of Fine Grassy Hills’, Mt Majura ‘well timbered’. West and northwest, open plains with reed and bulrush swamps extended to ‘a chain of ponds in forest [Ginninderra Creek?] . . . Saw many emu which feed on the plain and retire to the brushy hills’. East, forest skirted Campbell’s Hill below Mt Pleasant and above an ‘Open Plain’ which reached to ‘Undulating Open Forest’ beyond the airport, and northeast to ‘a dense brushwood of White Gum saplings’, then ‘fine forest country’ almost to Lake George. Woolshed Creek threaded the plain. It was more open than Canberry Creek, ‘as near a Plain or Plane as any spot of timberless Land I have observed in this Continent’, home to emu, plains turkey, quail, shingle-back lizards, tubers and grass orchids.244
