FW: SMH : first Australians worked a complex system of land management, with fire their biggest ally
Costello Oliver
The first farmers
Tony Stephens
October 1, 2011
Working the land ... Joseph Lycett's c.1817 watercolour, Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos, depicts the innovative use of fire burning. Photo: National Library
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-first-farmers-20110930-1l1gv.html#ixzz1Zn4xGcQ1
Far from being hunters and gatherers, the first Australians may have managed the biggest farming estate on Earth, writes Tony Stephens.
THE still common assumption is that Aboriginal Australians in 1788 were simple hunter-gatherers who relied on chance for survival and moulded their lives to the country where they lived. Historian Bill Gammage might have driven the last nail into the coffin of this notion.
Rather, Gammage argues, the first Australians worked a complex system of land management, with fire their biggest ally, and drew on the life cycles of plants and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. They managed, he says, the biggest estate on Earth.
The publishers of his new book, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, say it rewrites the history of the continent. It's a big claim. But not too big, Gammage says. ''When I look at the subject, I think, that's right. When I think it's my claim, I think people might regard me as a mug lair. But I believe the book will lead to a rethink of what the Aborigines did.''
Advertisement: Story continues below Henry Reynolds, the historian who has written extensively on the effect of white settlement on indigenous Australians, says in a foreword: ''He [Gammage] establishes without question the scale of Aboriginal land management, the intelligence, skill and inherited knowledge which informed it.''
Gammage draws striking conclusions from more than a decade's research:
The Aborigines of 1788 could not have survived recent bushfires that killed dozens of Australians and destroyed houses, flora and fauna. Uncontrolled fire could wipe out Aboriginal food. People had to prevent it or die. They worked hard to make fire work for them. They burnt off in patches, knowing the sensitivities of different plant species and that timing was crucial. Evidence strongly suggests that no devastating fires occurred.
The Aborigines farmed as an activity rather than a lifestyle. They grew crops of tubers such as yams, grain such as native millet, macadamia nuts, fruits and berries. People reared dingoes, possums, emus and cassowaries, moved caterpillars to new breeding areas and carried fish stock across country.
They knew that kangaroos preferred short grass, native bees preferred desert bloodwood, koalas tall eucalypts and rock wallabies thick growth. The Aborigines set templates to suit land, plants and animals. Explorers such as Eyre, Mitchell and Leichhardt noted how indigenous Australians fired grass to bring on short green pick to attract kangaroos and other animals. To do this they had to make sure the grass was nutritious and to provide shelter so that the kangaroos would not feel vulnerable.
There is no such thing as pristine wilderness in Australia. More trees grow in areas now known as national parks than did in 1788.
Gammage, adjunct professor in the Australian National University's humanities research centre, is best known for his ground-breaking The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War. His main sources for the new book are writing and art depicting land before Europeans changed it, anthropological and ecological accounts of Aboriginal societies, and the study of plant habitats. His huge bibliography include Abel Tasman in 1642, James Cook in 1770 and he credits researchers who sensed purpose in Aboriginal burning, including R.C.Ellis, Sylvia Hallam, Eric Rolls and Tim Flannery.
Some critics assume that early colonial artists romanticised their landscapes but Gammage says they were the photographers of their day and sought accuracy.
Joseph Lycett's painting, Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos (c.1817), depicts fire burning away from trees to a grassy area, driving kangaroos to the hunters' spears. By shaping the land carefully for grazing animals, the Aborigines paved the way for pastoral occupation.
''The more carefully they made the land, the more likely settlers were to take it,'' he writes. ''The Dreaming taught why the world must be maintained; the land taught how. One made land care compulsory, the other made it rewarding.''
Charles Darwin called indigenous Australians ''harmless savages wandering about without knowing where they shall sleep at night and gaining their livelihood by hunting in the woods''. Gammage believes we have not learned enough from them: ''Europeans defined civilisation as being like them. They thought Aborigines didn't know anything.'' He writes: ''We have a continent to learn … we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day we might become Australian.''
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage (Allen & Unwin, $49.99).
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-first-farmers-20110930-1l1gv.html#ixzz1Zn4g3cZN
Yours sincerely,
Oliver Costello
Project Officer I Aboriginal Co-Management Unit I National Parks and Wildlife Service I Office of Environment and Heritage I Department of Premier and Cabinet
PO Box 1967 Hurstville BC NSW 1481 I P: 9585 6626 I F: 9585 6666 I E: oliver....@environment.nsw.gov.au I W: www.environment.nsw.gov.au/jointmanagement
-----Original Message-----
From: Waminda Parker [mailto:wpa...@nccnsw.org.au]
Sent: Tuesday, 4 October 2011 4:35 PM
To: Costello Oliver
Subject: SMH : first Australians worked a complex system of land management, with fire their biggest ally
Hi Oliver,
Hope all well.
Assume you have seen this?
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-first-farmers-20110930-1l1gv.html#ixzz1ZTs1ukuH
Hope all well.
Waminda
--
Waminda Parker
Project Manager
Hotspots Fire Project
P: 02 9516 0359
Level 2, 5 Wilson Street
PO Box 137
Newtown NSW 2042
www.hotspotsfireproject.org.au
This email is intended for the addressee(s) named and may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and then delete it immediately.
Any views expressed in this email are those of the individual sender except where the sender expressly and with authority states them to be the views of the Office of Environment and Heritage, NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet.
PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL
Terry Hill
Jobs in Parks And Wildlife.
Dear All.
On the Jobs NSW website advertised is 3 positions. Please pass on to those who may be interested ..
Field Supervisor Aboriginal - Enhanced Bushfire Management Program (OEH 306-11 - 00000LN8)
RFS Disclaimer:
This email message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and delete this email and any copies or links to this email completely and immediately from your system. Views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, and are not necessarily the views of the NSW Rural Fire Service.
Richard Kennedy
Obviously “Rocket Science” is a pre requisite to understanding the primitives of this landscape. DOH!!
From: fires...@googlegroups.com [mailto:fires...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Costello Oliver
Sent: Tuesday, 4 October 2011 5:11 PM
To: fires...@googlegroups.com
*******************************************************************
The information in this message and in any attachments may be confidential. If you
are not the intended recipient of this message, you must not read, forward, print,
copy, disclose, or use in any way the information in this message or any attachment
contained. If you are not the intended recipient, please call 02 6043 7600 or notify
ne...@necma.vic.gov.au and immediately delete or destroy all copies of this
message and any attachments.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.
*******************************************************************
Jason Stewart
G'day everyone from Jason, Noorinbee North, Vic.,
Prior to later–on when i've time, introducing myself,
rather than just silently lurking in this–here important group—i'm writing this really humbled and pleased to join you all here—wish i'd found you all here earlier,
here is something i give to share:
-> http://replay.web.archive.org/20040724024524/http://godot.unisa.edu.au/wac/pdfs/192.pdf
I commend you to reading this very concise, 3p, important short, to the point, scientific paper, sharing it around with people, please – in this case, a review piece of science, rather than, the significant history which Gammage, Bill's Biggest Estate on Earth is:
Full Citation
Gammage, Bill's Biggest Estate on Earth:
Not one piecemeal piece of science;
Really significant history.
You know, I mean, this is the at–once both qualification and quality, of Biggest Estate on Earth;
His very significant history, which, ya know, he expressedly and deliberately qualifies as a work of history and historiography;
As history very valuably subjective—inter–subjectivity;
In which, ya know, he is quoting many different points of view. As ya know!, some of the fine–details of his many wonderful historical quotes contradict other ones, in different geographic or subjective contexts; Overall, Biggest Estate on Earth, a compelling, critically important big picture history.
Pascoe, Bruce's Dark Emu coming out before too long, proves to be even much better again! Yea!, i love Bruce's work, even more.
See:
-> http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research/media/seminars/2010/2_BPascoe_160810.mp3 (Audio)
One of the AIATSIS 2010 Seminar Series 2,
from which i had the great priviledge to participate.
-> http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research/seminarseries/2010-2.html
Furthermore, some of many of my key references, i have shared citations or PDF–links of, for my ready–use editing dodgy–pedia,
here:
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Macropneuma
Best wishes, great to join you all,
Sincerely,
Jason Stewart
–bushman, field botanist–ecologist, (自然農法 shizen nōhō (Japanese)) nature farmer,...
Noorinbee North, Vic.
SE corner of Oz (–my deliberate vernacular for Aus)
Jason Stewart
Pascoe, Bruce's Dark Emu coming out before too long, proves to be even much better again! Yea!, i love Bruce's work, even more.
See:
*VIDEO* -> http://vimeo.com/14726319
-> http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research/media/seminars/2010/2_BPascoe_160810.mp3 (Audio)
One of the AIATSIS 2010 Seminar Series 2,
from which i had the great priviledge to participate.
-> http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research/seminarseries/2010-2.html
Terry Hill
Jason.
Are you a Koori? Stewarts are my mob from Far south Coast NSW.. ??
Terry Hill
Jason P Stewart
Jason P Stewart
Jason Stewart
Thanks very much Oliver,
really glad to join you all here.
i forgot to mention the sweetest little bit of extra news, with regards to Bruce Pascoe, author & speaker i shared links of his talk, with Bill Gammage Biggest Estate on Earth author;
Bill Gammage was very quietly there, attending Bruce Pascoe's AIATSIS talk, Mon 16th Aug. 2010, and they met afterwards and conversed, yeh! (i just met Bill too).
Peace and joy, all, really!
Jason
Jason Stewart
Gammage, Bill
2011 Oct
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia (←Google books page link).
Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin (online page link).
ISBN 9781742377483.
Jacket inside front cover summary:
"
Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised.
For over a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year.
We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The Biggest Estate on Earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience.
... And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind.
"
Following is a long listing of Bill Gammage's related lectures, interviews, appearances and reviews of the book and so on, and then further below further related articles, often whioch he published earlier in journals or in the 'grey' literature:
(1 Oct 2011, again)
The first farmers by Tony Stephens (Books article) Sydney Morning Herald, syndicated in The Canberra Times, The Age (Melbourne) and Fairfax company papers across Australia.- (8 Oct 2011) A land crafted by social endeavour by Nicolas Rothwell; review of the book in the: Books (section), The Australian (newspaper).
(11 Oct 2011)
How Aborigines planned and managed Australia, Interview with Michael McKenzie about the new book, story by Greg Muller, (audio);ABC Radio National Bush Telegraph program
.(14 Oct 2011)
Experts debate the value of prescribed burning by Greg Muller, (audio), "Michael Mackenzie speaks with Charles Meredith from Biosis Research; Tony Pedro, farmer near the Tingle forest in WA"; ABC Radio National Bush Telegraph program – effectively a closely timely followup to the 11 Oct 2011 interview withBill Gammage
critiquing some interpretations of Bill Gammage's "The Biggest Estate on Earth".(14 Oct 2011) Launch of the book by Premier of Tasmania Lara Giddings, Fullers Bookshop, Hobart, second photo of two, (event in facebook).
(14 Oct 2011)
The Biggest Estate,ABC TV 7:30 (TV video online)
: Local author and historian Bill Gammage has a new book - with a revolutionary perspective on the land management techniques of Aborigines.(15 Oct 2011) believing by Sally Pryor; book review;
Canberra Times; (not found now in the newspaper's archives – see the article quotation below).- (15 Oct 2011) Burning questions by Adrian Hyland (article about book): "Adrian Hyland is the author of Kinglake-350.", The Age (newspaper), Melbourne: Fairfax.
- (20 Oct 2011) Eric Rolls Memorial Lecture: Fire in 1788: the closest ally delivered by Bill Gammage, in the National Library of Australia Theatre, Canberra; presented by the Watermark Literary Society and The National Library of Australia; Wednesday 20 October 2010, please be seated by 6 pm. Informit online article archive, subscription available via the National Library of Australia.
- (20 Oct 2011, apparently according to 'The Greens' politcal party media release announcement, conflicting with his above Eric Rolls Memorial Lecture at the NLA, and no mention in Google anywhere else:) "Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney will host the launch of Bill Gammage's latest book, 'Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia'. RSVP: by 12 October to emma.arnold@... or 6125 6674; When: Thursday 20 October 5.00 for 5.30pm; Where: Theatrette - Sir Roland Wilson Building (120), Australian National University McCoy Circuit." [???]
- (22 Oct 2011) A burning question by Bruce Pascoe, historian, Kulin man and Irishman; his brief review of the book; Canberra Times; (not found now in the newspaper's archives – see the article quotation below).
- (23 Oct 2011) Landmark account of lost stewardship by Peter Boyer, review of the book; Sunday Tasmanian (newspaper).
(27 Oct 2011)
Bill Gammage on the Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, his recent talk, at the Wheeler Centre, The State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; –a talk he contextualised for Melbourne history.- (28 Oct 2011) Masters of the blaze by Geoffrey Blainey; his review of it, in Australian Book Review.
- (earlier: 16 Aug 2011) The Adelaide District in 1836 (Seminar, Humanities Research Centre, Research School of Humanities & the Arts) by Professor Bill Gammage, Tue, 16 Aug 2011, 4:00pm - 5:30pm.
- (earlier: 21 Sept 2011) Recasting perceptions by Robert Macklin Book Review: “The Biggest Estate on Earth” By Bill Gammage, Allen and Unwin ($49.99). Reviewed by Robert Macklin; Canberra CityNews (weekly news magazine).
- (1 Dec 2011) 'The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia' by Bill Gammage [Review by] James Boyce The Monthly (magazine and online publication), Dec 2011 - Jan 2012 (issue).
- (8 Dec 2011) The biggest estate on earth: how Aborigines made Australia by Bill Gammage. in "The Conversation": "The Conversation is an independent source of information, analysis and commentary from the university and research sector — written by acknowledged experts and delivered directly to the public. Our team of professional editors work with more than 1,600 academic authors to make this wealth of knowledge and expertise accessible to all.".
- (13 Dec 2011) Canberra author's challenge lands award by Sally Pyror, Cultural Institutions Reporter, The Canberra Times; quotation: "The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, was yesterday named the winner of the Manning Clark National Cultural Award, offered each year to an individual and a group for outstanding contributions to the quality of Australian cultural life."
- (17 Dec 2011) Our nation's first cultivators by Jeff Maynard, review of the book, in NQ Life (section) Books (subsection) Townsville Bulletin (newspaper).
- (future: 7 Feb 2012) The Biggest Estate on Earth: Aboriginal land management through history by Adjunct Professor Bill Gammage at The Australian Academy of Science: "Caring for the Australian countryside: lessons from the past and present" public lecture series (internet live stream available), Tuesday 7 February 2012, 5:30 pm; Live streaming from 6pm; AAS: Shine Dome, Gordon Street, (beside ANU) Canberra; Free entry and parking; RSVPs essential, Email: shannon...@science.org.au, Phone: 02 6201 9460, Fax: 02 6201 9494.
- –there's more, but that's all i wanted to record here of my research, for now—so that i may share it with all of you and further contacts of mine. This isn't even my most important research by a long shot, now it's shared i can go back to that more important nature observation 'research'. Peaceful best wishes everybody.
Quotation, below, of the article by Bruce Pascoe reviewing Bill Gammage's Biggest Estate on Earth, missing now from The Canberra Times website archives (i don't get paranoid nor suspicious of this question; i just keep it an open question), but not missing still in Factiva international newspaper archives:
"
Bruce Pascoe hails a revisionist history of indigenous land management in Australia
Thousands of years of burning, mulching and harvesting had rendered the yam pastures so productive that you 'could run your fingers through the soil'
Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos, c 1820, by Joseph Lycett, the cover image of The Biggest Estate on Earth by Canberra historian Bill Gammage, below.
Main image: National Library of Australia
Because Australia cannot acknowledge how it came to occupy the continent it has to tell fibs about the past. Our inability to say or write little words like "invasion", "theft" and "reparation" mean we are doomed to repeat idiocies in the rendition of history and ignore facts which would be of lasting benefit to the country if we were to investigate them. There are few who swim against the tide of public opinion, and even fewer with the necessary research skills who can authoritatively insist on a revision of the assumptions which have caused Australians to misuse the land, denigrate the history of the First Australians and trivialise our own intelligence with misrepresentations of the past. Knowing that such claims galvanise vigilantes to condemn the heretic, Bill Gammage's The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia has relied on the accounts of the early explorers and settlers to explain how the Aboriginal economy of 1788 really worked. Explorers are favourite Australian sons and their word is considered irrefutable, so use of their observations is often crucial to the acceptance of new ideas. Gammage's appendices anticipate criticism, and he offers a review of research methodologies which ignore the role of First Australians in the creation of the productive Australia witnessed by colonists. He wonders if much of the research into the colonial Australian landscape is hampered by visions "obscured by a subjective urge towards a natural explanation", blinded by the assumption that Aborigines were not sophisticated enough to have created the "English gentlemen's park". The Biggest Estate is exhaustive in its trawl through the public records to find descriptions of the landscape. Settler after settler is astonished to find grassy glades on the best soil and forest on the poorer country. Surely it should be the other way around? Unless people were responsible. But that idea was preposterous to a community intent on denigrating Aboriginal claims to possession. Few asked that question then, and even fewer ponder it now. Gammage is diplomatic in his revelation of these records but his search for an answer to the phenomenon is relentless. It's an extraordinary book. Readers will be amazed by some of the settlers' first impressions and I hope they will remain astonished that 200 years of governance and scholarship have ignored the material, or worse, failed to realise its significance. The chapter titled "Canvas of a Continent" is a remarkable study of the paintings and drawings of the first European impressions of Australia. It is still accepted that Lewis, Glover, Hoddle and Lycett were still dreaming of England when they painted their first canvases at Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney. The forests were impossibly open, the grassy knolls and plains too frequent; where was the bush, where was the scrub, where was the true Australia, our historians and art theorists scoffed. These first painters were incompetent peddlers of myth! Except their impressions of the country are matched exactly by early colonial descriptions. Open plains surrounded the site of Melbourne, large clearings interspersed the Tasmanian forest, which was much more confined then than now, despite the timber industry's best efforts. Cook, Banks and Dawes are stunned by the garden-like scenery at Sydney. All over Australia the countryside looks like a managed English estate. In order to validate the authenticity of the colonial artists' representations, Gammage returns to the sites and photographs the same scenes. There is much change, of course, in some cases much degradation of the land, but, in comparing photograph to painting, it is uncanny how frequently it is possible to recognise the ridges and mounts and even individual rocks painted all that time ago. Some trees are still there with their recognisable arrangement of limbs. It's a startling visual survey. The artists were not inventing these scenes at all; they were painting what they saw. In some photos the scene has become clogged with wattle and scrub where once there were delightfully deep panoramas. Gammage takes the reader from these revelations to the origins of this park-like appearance. How was it made this way? Fire is a big part of the answer. Not wildfire, not uncalculated blazes, but shrewdly planned campaigns maintained over centuries. Evidence of the collaboration with neighbouring nations to continue this pattern of templates, as Gammage describes them, is also on the public record. It is amazing how many people understood that Aborigines manipulated the temper of Australian vegetation and said so on the record. They were vastly outnumbered by those who couldn't bring themselves to believe that "savages" were capable of such finely tuned agricultural control, but The Biggest Estate shows that even colonial gainsayers of Aboriginal sagacity described the same fair face that so excited pastoralists. Gammage outlines the frequency with which settlers and colonial officers resorted to such words as "harvest", "irrigate", "mulch", "transplant", "sow", "winnow", "store" and "reap" to describe what they saw of the Aboriginal economy. It was common for colonists to marvel that the country was ready to graze immediately, that the soil had such a light tilth that it was as if it had already been ploughed. It had. Thousands of years of burning, mulching and harvesting had rendered the yam pastures so productive that you "could run your fingers through the soil". The Biggest Estate examines the origins of words like "agriculture" and "farming" and argues that Europeans paid heed only to the forms of land use that were familiar to them. He points out that Aboriginal Australians were aware of Asian agricultural methods, and in some cases had visited Asian countries prior to Europeans arriving in Australia, but chose not to employ the smallholder methods, having already developed large-scale systems which allowed them to drought-proof their production. Gammage examines Charles Darwin's claim that the Aborigines were unproductive wanderers who didn't have a plan for where they would sleep that night, and he provides a deluge of information to refute Darwin's brief and casual observation. The change from the cultivated aspect so frequently reported by the first Europeans to a hard and erosion- prone surface shocked many in the first years after the introduction of sheep and other hard-hoofed animals. The Biggest Estate produces the testimony of countless colonists who remark at how little erosion was to be seen in the country in 1788 and their alarm at the speed with which the country eroded afterwards and how quickly fertility dropped. It has been assumed by most researchers that the Australian flora witnessed by the first European visitors was a natural response to soil type and climate but Gammage is exhaustive in his analysis of the appearance of Australian pastures at 1788 and the extent of Aboriginal intervention in their production.
Continued Page 27
17191041
Federal Capital Press of Australia Pty Ltd
Document CANBTZ0020111023e7am0007q
[continued] From Page 23
The acceptance that Aborigines altered the Australian landscape has been promoted by writers and scientists such as Tim Flannery and Eric Rolls, but most use the term ''fire-stick farming'' to describe Aboriginal interaction with the land. It's almost as if there is an unconscious need to deride the process. Firestick conjures a careless method employed by an unsophisticated mind. Gammage's study reveals an incredibly complex planning regime backed by religious and social restraint. The idea that a pan-continental land use could be maintained by clans spread over thousands of kilometres and across vastly different languages is a miracle of human development and social governance. That it took so long for a book to wonder about such great ideas is remarkable but it should make our enthusiasm to continue and extend that wondering a primary purpose of our public debate about nationhood and inheritance. Gammage has received attacks on his thesis from fellow academics who treat him on occasions as if he is a ''flat earther'' but in fact the reverse is more likely to be correct. He suggests, rather tentatively, that the term ''hunter-gatherer'' needs some revision but I think that this book, and the work of Rupert Gerritsen and a handful of other scientists and historians, is making a much more resolute claim for that reassessment. This is a massive research thesis yet it reads like a detective yarn as it sifts reams of evidence but allows the reader to reach their own revelation. It is never didactic and always entertaining. As an Australian, it's an enormous relief to read The Biggest Estate but as an Aboriginal Australian it's a confounding experience; you don't know whether to laugh with relief or cry with regret. Bruce Pascoe's latest book is Chainsaw File (Oxford) and his next is Dark Emu, a study of Aboriginal agriculture, which is yet to find an Australian publisher. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. By Bill Gammage. Allen & Unwin. 434pp. $49.99.
17198319
Federal Capital Press of Australia Pty Ltd
Document CANBTZ0020111023e7am0007k
"
– courtesy of Factiva, Dow Jones, international newspaper archives, available through membership of the National Library of Australia. The formatting of this article in Factiva was all messed up, so i don't know where in the original the paragraph breaks were—i don't know at all—so i have left it without paragraph breaks which must be in the original by any standard; Sorry this is difficult to read, for us all, in this form.
"
believing
By The Canberra Times
1560 words
15 October 2011
Canberra Times
CANBTZ
8
English
(c) 2011 The Canberra Times
Gammage at his home in Turner, above left. Photos: Marina Neil
Bill Gammage: "There's not really much point writing stuff that recycles what's already known - plenty of people can do that. Whether I succeed in this sort of ambition is another matter." Seeing is believing
Bill Gammage likes to look at ideas and history from a different perspective and his latest work reinforces that approach, Sally Pryor writes "Aborigines were not aimless hunter-gatherers, but people who planned and worked hard to make plants and animals abundant, convenient and predictable. They depended not on chance, but on policy." When convict and artist Joseph Lycett set out to paint a pastoral scene near Newcastle around 1820, he didn't really know what he was seeing. The scene shows hills that are in turns wooded and open grassland, with smoke billowing from the centre and Aboriginal hunters poised with spears as kangaroos emerge from the burning bush. It's a faithful rendering, certainly, but to Canberra historian Bill Gammage, the painting is as much a study of the history of the landscape as of artistic merit. And, unbeknownst to the artist, it's also a clear- eyed depiction of how Aboriginal Australians were carefully managing the land long before European settlement. Gammage has spent the last 12 years examining written and visual records of the Australian landscape from the time of European settlement onwards, to determine how Aborigines used fire as an ally in its ability to help plants and trees regenerate. His resulting book, The Biggest Estate on Earth, challenges the long-held assumption that Australia was an untamed wilderness, across which indigenous inhabitants roamed at random. On the contrary, by the time the English arrived to stake their claim, Aboriginal people had a long-established system of land management in place, one that had rendered the landscape much closer to the well-kept parklands of England than we had ever imagined, with wide-open spaces bordering on forests. Colonial landscapes of European-style parkland amid the bush were not, therefore, the product of nostalgia or wishful thinking by Australia's homesick early settlers, but a faithful rendering of how the land's Aboriginal inhabitants had been living for thousands of years. A long-time Canberra resident and academic at the Australian National University, Gammage is perhaps best known for his definitive First World War history, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War. Based on his PhD thesis and first published in 1974, the study is based on accounts from men on the front line, rather than official accounts. The book has been reprinted several times, and led to Gammage being hired as a consultant on the 1981 film Gallipoli. It also set the scene for what has become Gammage's modus operandi - taking a slightly skewed perspective of large-scale subjects. Although he is quick to point out that The Broken Years was, ultimately, a PhD with a deadline, he has never shied away from sweeping themes. "There's not really much point writing stuff that recycles what's already known - plenty of people can do that. Whether I succeed in this sort of ambition is another matter," he says. While he originally submitted his latest work to the publisher as a draft in progress, anticipating months of tweaking and rewriting ahead, he was surprised when it was published almost immediately. But perhaps that was inevitable, dealing as it does with modern preoccupations such as sustainable land management and food security. The subject of Aboriginal land use has long interested Gammage, from his early days working on farms in country Australia, to the years he spent writing a history of the Narrandera Shire in the Riverina the 1980s. "I found early quotes about the country around Narrandera which described it as really rich grassland, and yet now it's trees," he says. "And I thought, how could it be trees now and grass then? It didn't make sense. It couldn't be a bushfire, because we're talking about eucalypts; if you have a bushfire, it doesn't kill off the eucalypts, they sprout leaves from their branches, they come back, we can see that around Canberra all the time. So then I started to go into it - it couldn't be anything like the soil because it was the same soil ... So I decided it was Aborigines, and that led me to go into Aboriginal burning, and gradually I realised that it was more and more precise, which is what this book's about." In researching the book, he says he felt unable to draw on accounts of Aboriginal communities about their early land management practices. "Knowledge is very valuable for Aborigines, even more than for us. They prize knowledge the same way as we prize material goods, and I just couldn't walk up to complete strangers and say, 'Righto, you've got 20minutes, give us your basic secrets and then I'll be out of here. So it was really only people I knew, or reading what other people had written about Aborigines," he says. Instead, he relied on early accounts from explorers and settlers, from the time before Europeans had irreversibly affected the landscape, as well as the work of anthropologists.
He also relied on botany, specifically the science of how trees behave in certain climates and conditions. "That's really valuable, because you can see in those early paintings particular kinds of plants and you know how they respond to fire, so you know their fire history, and then you can see the Aborigines must have done something to them," he says. "I think first of all, you have to drop to the fact that you can learn something by looking at the plants, that the shape of the eucalypt tells you its history. A classic example, I think, is if you go to Tasmania or any rainforest area, you can see huge eucalypts over the top of the rainforest, and no small eucalypts. Eucalypts won't grow in rainforest because there's not enough light - rainforest plants stop it. So how did the big eucalypts get there? They got there because there was no rainforest ... [but] why was there no rainforest? If you leave things alone, rainforest comes on as it does now. So it came from regular burning." Early European paintings have proved to be one of the best such sources when it comes to interpreting Australia's landscape; Lycett's scene showing the sharp distinction between grass and forest, and the strategic positions of Aborigines poised to spear the kangaroos as they emerge from the bush is as good an example as any of how the land was used. It's a way of life we could never revert to today, no matter how effective it was back then. The notion of fuel control is often discussed in relation to the lead-up to the yearly summer fire season, but there are too many modern-day objections to the environmental hazards of burning and constant smoke. Gammage has read early accounts of the constant smoke haze over colonial Australia; Aboriginal people, he says, made their choice - inhaling smoke constantly or getting burnt to death. "Once they know fire as a friend, then they could use it to distribute plants and animals most conveniently," he says. "The one thing all their care and religious enforcement didn't do was prepare them for outsiders, different ideas, different weapons, different diseases - they had no defence against those, and they paid for it." Having worked on the book for so long - mostly part-time in between supervising his PhD students and delivering lectures - he is glad his ideas are finally in book form. And while he could well have written more on the subject, he is interested to see where readers will take it. "It's a bit like The Broken Years. I sort of set the hare running, and if other people start chasing it, okay, I'll leave it alone," he says. "One of the reasons I was anxious to get this out was people were starting to use my ideas elsewhere." But above all, he hopes his book will change the way concepts of early land management are understood. One of the great ironies of the extent to which we have overlooked Aboriginal land management is the fact that the concept of terra nullius has only ever been truly apparent in the untouched tracts of national parks that we are so keen on preserving today. "I didn't set out to do this, I set out with a curiosity about what was going on in the landscape, but now I've done it, I hope that it will lead to an understanding that Aborigines were actually managing the land as carefully as we do - differently, but as carefully," he says. "And therefore, all the stuff about terra nullius and about them not owning the land and not deserving to occupy it, it's all nonsense. They were a society just like ours, who were careful with their environment, even more than we are, which is what you'd expect after 60,000 years." The Biggest Estate on Earth - How Aborigines Made Australia, by Bill Gammage, is published by Allen & Unwin.
17142472
Federal Capital Press of Australia Pty Ltd
Document CANBTZ0020111017e7af0004d
"
– courtesy of Factiva, Dow Jones, international newspaper archives, available through membership of the National Library of Australia.
Also more and older of his writings on Koori (Aboriginal) cultural land management :
ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー
2005
(London: Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. King's College. Each year the Centre publishes London Papers in Australian Studies . These are representative of some of the most recent and exciting intellectual work in Australian Studies.)
(12): 1–27.
Gammage, Bill, 1942-
| Local call number: | S 99/1 |
|---|---|
| Principal Author: | Gammage, Bill, 1942- |
| Title: | Galahs / Bill Gammage |
| Source: | Australian Historical Studies Vol. 40 no. 3 (September 2009), p. 275-293, map |
| Imprint: | 2009 |
| Annotation: | Analysis of how galah distribution in Australia follows the production of grain first by Aboriginal people are later by European settlers; the name galah derived from 'gular' of the Ngiyampaa language Wailwon people of New South Wales; includes discussion on Aboriginal farming of tubers, yams, grains and rice and the patterns of Aboriginal land management and plant use; use of fire in plant management; includes discussion of Norman Tindale's 1974 map that shows 'the principal areas where there are indications of major dependence on grass seed foods' by Aboriginal people |
| Collection: | |
| Personal subject: | Tindale, Norman B. (Norman Barnett), 1900-1993 |
| Topical: | Environment - Land management |
| Topical: | Food - Plants - Yams |
| Topical: | Food - Plants |
| Topical: | Food - Plants - Seeds / Flour |
| Topical: | Environment - Land management - Fire |
| Topical: | Animals - Birds - Parrots |
| Topical: | Food - Preparation |
| Topical: | Gathering - Plants - Roots and tubers |
| Topical: | Gathering - Plants - Seeds |
| Place: | New South Wales (NSW) |
| Place: | Victoria (Vic) |
| Place: | Western Australia (WA) |
| Place: | Arnhem Land (NT) |
| Place: | Finke River (South Central NT SF53-13, SG53-01, SG53-06) |
| Place: | Bogan River (N NSW SH55-06, SH55-10, SH55-11, SH55-15) |
| Place: | Namoi River (N NSW SH55-12, SH56-09) |
| Language/Group: | Ngiyambaa / Ngemba language (D22) (NSW SH55-10) |
| Language/Group: | Worrorra people (K17) (WA SD51-16) |
| Language/Group: | Manjiljarra / Martu Wangka people (A51.1) (WA SF51-12) |
Gammage, Bill, 1942-
| Local call number: | p GAM |
|---|---|
| Accession no.: | , CANBERRA, ACT, 2600 |
| Personal Author: | Gammage, Bill, 1942- |
| Title: | Australia under Aboriginal management / Bill Gammage. |
| Publication info: | Canberra, ACT : School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University College, University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, 2003. |
| Physical descrip: | p. 7-35 : ill. (some col.), map ; 21 cm. |
| Series: | (Barry Andrews memorial lecture ; 15th) |
| General Note: | Published "in association with the Barry Andrews Memorial Trust and the National Library of Australia" -- Title page verso. |
| General Note: | "31 October 2002" |
| Bibliography note: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-34) |
| Annotation: | Describes how Aboriginal peoples managed the environment in Australia to suit their needs - "their lives were ruled not by chance and hope, but by knowledge and policy" (p. 9); describes the use of fire throughout Australia, which, the author argues, "unified Australia"; traces the course of Canberry Creek, now Sullivan's Creek, to the Molonglo River, as it was at contact, likewise for Pialligo; Acton and Pialligo were made environments and were the areas settled first by Europeans, as were many of the areas first settled at contact |
| Acquisitions source: | Donated by FAHCSIA Library |
| ISBN: | 073170388X |
| Subject term: | Aboriginal Australians--Fire use |
| Subject term: | Aboriginal Australians--Social life and customs. |
| Subject term: | Land use--Australia, Southeastern--History |
| Topical: | Environment - Land management - Fire |
| Topical: | Hunting - Fire and smoke |
| Topical: | Environment - Land management |
| Topical: | Indigenous knowledge |
| Topical: | Culture - Relationship to land |
| Topical: | Settlement and contacts |
| Place: | Australia |
| Place: | Canberra (ACT SI55-16) |
| Place: | Acton (Canberra ACT SI55-16) |
| Place: | Pialligo (Canberra ACT SI55-16) |
| Added Author: | Australian Defence Force Academy. School of Humanities and Social Sciences |
Gammage, Bill, 1942-
| Local call number: | B H189.15/S1 |
|---|---|
| Principal Author: | Gammage, Bill, 1942- |
| Title: | Mrs Aneas Gunn / Bill Gammage |
| Source: | Storykeepers/ edited by Marion Halligan, Potts Point, N.S.W. : Duffy & Snellgrove, 2001, p.125-131 |
| Imprint: | 2001 |
| Collation: | p. 125-131 |
| Annotation: | Reflections on the life and writings of Mrs Aneas Gunn; describes her attitude to Aborigines, the land, tand the characters, both Indigenous and non Indigenous |
| Collection: | |
| Personal subject: | Gunn, Aeneas, Mrs., 1870-1961 |
| Topical: | Economic sectors - Agriculture and horticulture - Pastoral industry |
| Topical: | Literature and stories |
| Topical: | Race relations - Racism |
| Topical: | Race relations - Representation - History |
| Place: | Northern Territory (NT) |
Gammage, Bill, 1942-
| Local call number: | B M891.58/L1 |
|---|---|
| Principal Author: | Gammage, Bill, 1942- |
| Title: | The scramble for possession : pastoral leasehold and agricultural freehold 1860-1900 / Bill Gammage |
| Source: | The land and the people : the Wik lectures 1998 / Alan Atkinson ... [et al.] ; introduction by Walter Phillips ; edited by Richard Morton, Carlton, Vic. : History Institute,1998, p. 35-46 |
| Imprint: | 1998. |
| Annotation: | Looks at the effects of land ownership and land settlement policies on Aboriginal land rights in late 19th Century; change from leasehold to freehold as selectors bought land for agricultural purposes in south; effect on current land entitlements; attempts at assimilation of Aborigines; Aboriginal ownership of land |
| Collection: | |
| Topical: | Land rights - Ownership |
| Topical: | Settlement and contacts - Colonisation - 1851- |
| Topical: | Land rights |
| Topical: | Government policy - Assimilation |
| Place: | Australia |
Gammage, Bill, 1942-
| Local call number: | p GAM |
|---|---|
| Accession no.: | p016110 |
| Personal Author: | Gammage, Bill, 1942- |
| Title: | The achievement of the Australian Aborigines / Bill Gammage |
| Publication info: | Honolulu:The Australian and New Zealand Studies Project, School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies , 1992 1992 |
| Physical descrip: | 9 p. |
| Series Title: | (Occasional paper no.1) |
| General Note: | At foot of title; Text of an Australian and New Zealand Studies Occasional Lecture given at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on Wednesday, December 9, 1992 |
| Annotation: | Overview of cultural change and adaptation to environment derived from recent archaeological research |
| Topical: | Human biology - Physiological adaptation |
| Place: | New Zealand (NZ) |
| Place: | Australia |
Douglas, Louise
| Local call number: | REF 994 AUS |
|---|---|
| Accession no.: | 008144b |
| Title: | Australians 1938 / editors, Bill Gammage, Peter Spearritt : oral history co-ordinator Louise Douglas |
| Publication info: | Broadway, N.S.W.:Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates , 1987 1987 |
| Physical descrip: | xviii, 474 p.; ill., (mostly col.) maps, ports. |
| Series Title: | (Australians:a historical library) |
| General Note: | Includes index |
| Access: | Not for Inter-Library Loan |
| Annotation: | Includes chapters on Aborigines separately annotated; see Gerrard, A.; Harrison, S.; Ingram, C.; Markus, A. |
| Acquisitions source: | Copy 2 - donation from Tom Austen Brown collection |
| Topical: | Religions - Christianity - Missions |
| Topical: | Government policy - Assimilation - 1926-1950 |
| Topical: | History - Oral history |
| Place: | Australia |
| Added Author: | Douglas, Louise |
| Added Author: | Gammage, Bill, 1942- |
| Added Author: | Spearritt, Peter, 1949- |
Gammage, Bill, 1942-
| Local call number: | B G193.21/N1 |
|---|---|
| Accession no.: | 08349b |
| Personal Author: | Gammage, Bill, 1942- |
| Title: | Narrandera Shire / Bill Gammage |
| Publication info: | [Narrandera, N.S.W.]:Bill Gammage for the Narrandera Shire Council , 1986 1986 |
| Physical descrip: | xiv, 265 p., [4] p. of col. plates; ill., facsims., maps, ports. |
| General Note: | Bibliography; p. 252-259; Includes index; Maps on lining papers |
| Annotation: | Includes chapter on Wiradjuri; Narrungdera; creation mythology, Baiame; totems; traditional life; contact with Europeans |
| Topical: | Stories and motifs - Baiame |
| Topical: | Stories and motifs - Creation / Cosmology |
| Topical: | Religion - Totemism |
| Place: | Narrandera (SW NSW SI55-10) |
| Language/Group: | Wiradjuri people (D10) (NSW SI55-07) |
Bradley....@csiro.au
Yaama All
For those who attended Bills talk last night or streamed online, you can probably switch off.
I found it extremely interesting and felt like it was old news and somewhat instinctual (already built in me) also that this is what our old people and the ones gone before us have been saying all along. But the way he has presented the facts is the most telling using European quotes and art from the frontier as his evidence. This is refreshing and as we all know how proud Australia is of their frontier heroes and history, this puts Aboriginal (“savages”) land management in the same class as “English Gentry” by creating “Parks” – love it. It will also be interesting to see if the mainstream science and media takes it on as a positive and explores it and tests it or will it be the usual and turn it into a negative? Also the elephant in the room terra nullius and Native Title and Mabo.
The way I see it is that it is a ticket for Aboriginal people to be engaged in this debate - Caring for Country it is our custodial responsibility.
My other interest will be whether he has come across Aboriginal water management scenarios experienced by Europeans, so we can take on aqua nullius.
Yaluu
Brad Moggridge
Indigenous Water Research Specialist
CSIRO Land and Water
Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain ACT 2601
GPO Box 1666 CANBERRA ACT 2601
Ph: +61 2 6246 5633
Fx: +61 2 6246 5800
Mob: 0417 252 667
Please consider the environment before printing this email ☻