by Bill Gammage
The pine behaved more like an exotic weed than a native tree.
Why? A few saw biblical retribution, which was no help. Many thought pine spread when bushfires were stopped. ‘Young pines are now springing up over large tracts of country so thickly that in a very short time they will form a dense scrub’, an official reported in 1880. ‘The cause . . . is ascribed to the discontinuance of bush fires.’62 In 1887 another told the New South Wales parliament that formerly well grassed, open country was now a ‘Great Central Scrub’ because pine was no longer ‘kept in check by sweeping bushfires’.63 In 1901 a New South Wales Royal Commission concluded, ‘overstocking . . . coupled with the rabbits, prevented the growth of grass to anything like its former extent, and so caused a cessation of bush fires, which had formerly occurred periodically. This afforded the noxious scrub a chance of making headway.’64 Yet pine was on the march long before rabbits, and surveyor CF Bolton pointed out that by the 1850s bushfires were being stopped as much as they ever would be, but in the mid 1860s the country was still open. He wrote in 1881, ‘extensive tracts of country which fifteen years ago were beautifully grassed open downs are now so overgrown with young pines that sheep can hardly make their way through them, whilst the original grasses have almost entirely disappeared’. He suggested that sheep spread seed during the 1866 drought.65
In 1998 Mick Allen, an acute observer, puzzled about bushfires. Newcomers found pine country ‘a mosaic of vegetation cover—open plains, brushes and scrubs, open and dense forests, myall plains’, but as early as 1848 Ben Boyd stated that Jemelong on the Lachlan had ‘pine scrubs . . . of late years getting nearly impassable, and destroying the pasturage’. ‘It stretches the credulity’, Allen wrote, ‘to believe that the right conditions for widespread dense pine regeneration did not occur over the 100–50 years before European exploration and settlement, and then there were neither rabbits nor sheep!’ He blamed fewer fires, and soil compaction which let shallow-rooted annuals replace perennials and herbs, so providing more sub-surface water and letting more pines germinate.66 Yet by 1848 pine was claiming places with little grazing or compaction, and in general newcomers lit more fires than in 1788, not fewer.67 Credulity must be stretched: the ‘right conditions’ for pine regeneration did not occur in the century before Europeans came. The change was man-made, from controlled to random fire.
1788 fire killed most pine seedlings but not most big trees, pine or other. Allen estimated that an 1883 pine count on Mungery West (NSW) indicated a few scattered trees germinating about the 1770s, the 1800s and the 1830s, then numbers increasing soon after Europeans came, thickening to forest by 1883.68 At Berembed on the Murrumbidgee four pines cut in 1905 are almost a metre wide and hardly lose girth over 13 metres: they must have grown in open country.69 These examples suggest clean-up fires every 30 years or so, plus cool burns every 1–3 years to kill seedlings. Clearly great care went into managing so ready a regenerator (picture 50).70
Newcomers liberated other species. Acacias have gone feral, notably Cootamundra Wattle in southern New South Wales, sometimes transplanted, sometimes spreading from its 1788 habitat. Why didn’t it spread earlier, to similar soils and climates? Galahs increased and spread dramatically after 1788, for surprising reasons, as did little corellas, crimson rosellas, crested pigeons, crows, currawongs and white-backed magpies,71 and even a few animals, notably red kangaroos and euros onto ‘marsupial lawns’ when stock shortened the grass.72
Such changes make 1788 Australia hard to recognise now. It was even a different colour (pictures 10–12). It had more green grass in summer, much less undergrowth, and fewer trees. In 1888 it had more trees than in 1788, deceiving newcomers into thinking that regenerating forest marked virgin land. Today there are fewer trees on farms, swampland, and I suspect arid and semi-arid country, but more in forests, national parks and remote places. Soil and water have changed, species have come, gone or moved (ch 2–3). Australia is a world leader in animal and plant extinctions, reflecting how ancient and vital 1788’s unnatural fires were (ch 1).
We know too little about 1788 to measure these changes, and our attempts are disabled by contemporary preferences and assumptions. For example we think trees ‘green’ and good, so we assume there must once have been more of them. Yet we accept wilderness: typical farming people, not for us the care of every inch. Peter Dwyer compared three New Guinea highlands groups, one gardeners, one largely hunter-gatherers, one both. Mentally and physically, only the gardeners fenced their world. The others had no words for centre and periphery, no sense of being spiritually distinct from the rest of creation, no landform hierarchy. For the gardeners ‘wilderness’ began just beyond their fences, for the hunter-gatherers it did not exist. Fences on the ground made fences in the mind.73 Australia had no fences in 1788. Some places were managed more closely than others, but none were beyond the pale.74
There is no return to 1788. Non-Aborigines are too many, too centralised, too stratified, too comfortable, too conservative, too successful, too ignorant. We are still newcomers, still in wilderness, still exporting goods and importing people and values. We see extinctions, pollution, erosion, salinity, bushfire and exotic pests and diseases, but argue over who should pay. We use land care merely to mitigate land misuse. We champion sustainability, which evokes merely surviving, whereas in 1788 people assumed abundance, and so did Genesis. We take more and leave the future less. Too few accept that this behaviour cannot survive the population time bomb. When the time comes to choose between parks and people, species and space, food and freedom, 1788’s values will be obliterated.
Yet across the shattered centuries 1788 can still teach, and some have begun to learn. Tree corridors replicate belts, wetlands are being restored, reserves and sanctuaries declared. Aborigines sometimes have more say in fire management, and whenever a city burns more people accept control fires, though these remain too few. Peter Andrews and others advocate land care which in part echoes 1788, such as slowing water and making tree–grass mosaics.75 When Bob Purvis took over Woodgreen Station northeast of Alice Springs in 1958, he faced serious land degradation. The run was 350 square miles, but only 50 square miles was good for stock, and that was eaten bare. Bob bought another 140 square miles of fair country, watched which grasses his cattle preferred, say 6–12 species, tested these for protein content, then adjusted his stocking rate to sustain them. If the grasses spread he increased his herd. More often they declined and he reduced it, until he got a balance at about 1000 head, a third of the 1958 herd. To support it he adjusted his fodder grasses to soil type, introduced a palatable buffel grass, fenced off fattening paddocks, stopped shooting dingos and netted dams in his useless country to keep kangaroos down, and sold or shot most horses.
Bob says he is still learning, but his cattle are prime, and Woodgreen is a grass oasis amid bare scrub. ‘Most of central Australia’, he says, ‘is carrying at least twice or, in some cases, four times what it can actually sustain, and that’s why you see bare ground . . . A lot of what you see is man made drought . . . When I was a kid, central Australia was regarded as fat cattle country. Today it is regarded as store cattle country.’76 Before he was a kid it was sheep country. Even Woodgreen is no longer that. Bob evolved his management over decades of trial and error, but it is easy to see 1788 in what he learnt. He uses space, manages locally, favours fodder grasses, concentrates stock on good country, makes templates of fattening paddocks, culls and adjusts to ensure balance and continuity.
On 10 July 1890 Alfred Howitt addressed the Royal Society of Victoria, the same which 30 years before had sent him to find Burke and Wills, on ‘The Eucalypts of Gippsland’. His talk was remarkable.
1. He grouped and described 24 species of Gippsland eucalypt, plus numerous forms and local variations. His descriptions were based on up to 26 samples of each species and form taken from scattered Gippsland locations, and showed both typifying characteristics and minute local differences in leaf, bud, flower, fruit and sometimes wood. Do
zens of differences were depicted in nine plates drawn by his daughter Annie.
2. He set down where each species and form occurred, whether local or general, on what soils, at what heights, in what terrain. For example he named species which rose from the coast up cool gullies on south facing slopes but gave way to others on warm north facing slopes, or still others in subalpine areas. He argued in detail that it followed that even small climate changes in the past must have affected and in the future would affect eucalypt distribution, perhaps even to extinction. This is accepted today, but on that night in 1890 Ferdinand von Mueller, director of Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens and no mug on eucalypts, observed that it was ‘work in an entirely new direction’.
3. He discussed the ‘Influence of Settlement’ on Gippsland’s eucalypts. This began ‘on the very day when the first hardy pioneers’ arrived. They put an end to the ‘annual’ fires of the Aborigines, letting undergrowth fill open forest and grass revert to bush. Howitt gave examples from all over Gippsland where it was ‘difficult to ride over parts which . . . were at one time open grassy country’, and concluded that in spite of European clearing, Gippsland’s forests were denser and more widespread than in 1788. Howitt’s chairman ‘confessed’ that he ‘had never heard or dreamt of ’ this ‘re-foresting’.
4. He argued that ending Aboriginal fire let insect populations explode. In the 1870s he saw whole forests dying, and found them infested with myriads of insect larvae. These also made headway because stock hardened the ground, causing water which had once seeped in to run off, so weakening the eucalypts by thirst. Hard ground and increased water flow were also why floods were more catastrophic than before Europeans came.
With breathtaking detail and economy, Howitt illuminated much of what this book labours to cover. He could do this because he thought as an Australian. He understood less than the Aborigines, and he knew it. He acknowledged often what they taught him, and his talk began with a list of eucalypts and their Kurnai names, but he never offered what was common then and now: comparison with Europe. He never said eucalypts were less deciduous, less green, less shady than Europe’s trees. He never mentioned England, where he lived his first 21 years. He was not merely describing Australian examples; he was evolving Australian premises.7778
Important books wait on pre-contact management in other lands, but only in Australia did a mobile people organise a continent with such precision. In some past time, probably distant, their focus tipped from land use to land care. They sanctioned key principles: think long term; leave the world as it is; think globally, act locally; ally with fire; control population. They were active, not passive, striving for balance and continuity to make all life abundant, convenient and predictable. They put the mark of humanity firmly on every place. They kept the faith. The land lived. Its face spoke. ‘Here are managers’, it said, ‘caring, provident, hardworking.’ This is possession in its most fundamental sense. If terra nullius exists anywhere in our country, it was made by Europeans.
This book interrupts Law and country at the moment when terra nullius came, and an ancient philosophy was destroyed by the completely unexpected, an invasion of new people and ideas. A majestic achievement ended. Only fragments remain. For the people of 1788 the loss was stupefying. For the newcomers it did not seem great. Until recently few noticed that they had lost anything at all. Knowledge of how to sustain Australia, of how to be Australian, vanished with barely a whisper of regret.
We have a continent to learn. If we are to survive, let alone feel at home, we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day we might become Australian.
APPENDIX 1
Science, history
and landscape
In 2008 the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, invited me to talk on 1788 land management when next in Hobart. This is Bill Jackson’s old department, among the first and best in studying pre-contact vegetation, and home to many who helped me. I prepared by preferring examples from work by them or their students, some of whom I hoped might hear the talk. I never gave it: the invitation had a time limit I was unaware of. In its focus on work by Tasmanian scientists across Australia, what follows reflects these origins, but questions a more general mindset among scientists who study landscapes in disciplines from anthropology to zoology.
One scientist summarised this mindset as, ‘If there is a natural explanation, prefer it’, and another emailed, ‘You must assume that natural features have natural causes until you can prove otherwise.’ For 1788 landscapes this is circular thinking, based on assuming that they were natural. I think they were made. When I say so, many scientists, not all,1 correct me, as in the email. Usually I let this pass. Life is short, and debating one by one with people so many and so well-resourced is futile. Yet their condescension has forced this book into more detail than a general reader might prefer, perhaps still without satisfying the specialist.
In the physical sciences experiments are repeated and laws established. All science uses this notion of objectivity, and sees history, which admits itself unable to control every variable, as subjective, hence unreliable. Like some historians, scientists form a hypothesis then test it, but unlike historians they seek a measurable outcome. A thing is objectively true if a test can be repeated with the same result. A valid test puts an end to speculation. But, a historian would say, it does not put an end to assumption. Any hypothesis is unavoidably loaded with cultural and personal assumptions, only sometimes apparent, which lie in wait to shape a test’s premises and so its results. Objectivity suppresses but does not eradicate this. It produced notions claimed to be scientific such as that the earth is flat or began in 4004 BC, or that malaria is caused by miasmas, or that measuring heads can prove a hierarchy of humanity, or that the atom is the smallest unit of matter, or that bushfires can be prevented. Later disowning these notions as unscientific simply reinforces a dogma of objectivity despite them.
I must not over-generalise. My dad was a botanist, including of natives, and his memory has been close throughout the years of this book. A geographer, Bill Jackson, and an archaeologist, Rhys Jones, pioneered research into 1788 fire. John Banks, Dave Bowman, RC Ellis, Beth Gott, Jamie Kirkpatrick, Peter Latz, Ian Lunt, Henry Nix, Jim Noble, Peter Sutton, Ian Thomas and but two pioneer historians, Sylvia Hallam and Eric Rolls, have illuminated my understanding. Not all accept my claims. Some think rightly that many have not been tested scientifically, and wrongly that many have little or no supporting evidence. More historical evidence exists than most scientists realise, but as well they and I differ in interpreting it. I value it; most of them devalue it, using it as preamble or for want of an alternative. I hope this book shows that I appreciate what scientists do, but have a different mindset.
A habit for natural explanation emerges in scientists who decree against 1788 fire. Some deny it completely, some minimise its impact, some accept it but deny purpose or control. These deniers push their assumptions hard.
Before offering specific examples, I list five common assumptions and my responses.
1. Especially in ‘remote’ areas such as desert or high country, Aborigines had no reason to touch the landscape, and therefore didn’t.
At the risk of their souls, people cared for every inch of their country, even after smallpox halved their numbers and management capacity. When no-one survived to manage a country, some distant connection tried to learn it (ch 4). Care did not always mean action: people might leave land alone for long periods.
2. Most Australian genera adapted to drought and hence to fire long before people arrived.
Of course this is true. Had not so many species adapted to fire there would have been no alliance for people to join. This in no way disproves 1788 fire. One could equally say that mining has not affected the landscape because metals pre-date Europeans. The claim does reveal a mindset.
3. The impact of 1788 fire was slight. Climate, soil, altitude, aspect, nutrients or growth habits suffice
to explain Australia’s vegetation.
This book shows that people often broke these parameters; they cannot explain all, or even most, 1788 landscapes.
4. Aborigines used fire, but there is no evidence of its conscious use as a fine-grained management tool.
This book has a tsunami of evidence, though perhaps a trickle of what exists. For many scientists the problem is that most of it is historical, and they dismiss history as ‘impressionistic’. I once heard a capable scientist, Dave Bowman, say this in a public lecture, misinterpreting what I told him about subjectivity. I said that historians know that history is subjective. People never agree on what evidence to select or emphasise, so no two studies of a subject can be the same. All disciplines, including science and history, persuade not by truth, but by fidelity to evidence and context. Bowman limited what I said to history, then said that this distinguished history from science! One day Bowman’s work will become history. I hope future researchers will be more generous to him.
5. Even if people did plan 1788 fire it is unwise to say so, because this would license ill-informed burning and extensive environmental damage.
Subjective, isn’t it? Fortunately I encountered it in only one scientist, though I’m told others think it.
Bowman’s lecture began, ‘It is intuitively obvious that historians should be natural allies of ecologists and land managers’.2 I agree, but Bowman and I soon part, because he applies disqualifying strictures to history but not to science, whereas I see them as intrinsic to both. His abstract concludes,
no matter how sociologically or psychologically satisfying a particular environmental historical narrative might be, it must be willing to be superseded with new stories that incorporate the latest research discoveries and that reflect changing social values of nature. It is contrary to a rational and publicly acceptable approach to land management to read a particular story as revealing the absolute truth.3
